D.M. Ferry & Co.

The Ferry-Morse Seed Company is a supplier of seeds, and was at one time the largest such company in the world. It is currently part of Jiffy International.

In 1856, Milo T. Gardner, Dexter M. Ferry, and Eber F. Church organized a small seed-growing company, M.T. Gardner & Company (also known as Gardner, Ferry, and Church) in Detroit, Michigan. The first year the company did $6,000 in business. Its profits continued to be stable until 1865, when Ferry bought out Gardner's share and took over the company. Ferry changed the company name to Ferry, Church & Co, and two years later, when Church retired, Ferry changed the name again, this time to D.M. Ferry & Co.

The business grew steadily and, in 1879, was incorporated under the name D.M. Ferry & Co with $750,000 in capital, and Ferry as president,James McMillan as vice-president, H. Kirke White as secretary, and Charles C. Bowen as treasurer. A. E. F. White, John Stoughton Newberry, and W. K. Anderson were also officers. At the same time, the Detroit Seed Company was absorbed into the new corporation. Business of the company continually increased for some time, until January 1, 1886, when a disastrous fire demolished the company's warehouse with the loss of near $1,000,000. However, Ferry quickly re-organized the company, bought seeds from outside sources and absorbed two smaller seed companies, and the company managed to fill orders for its customers.

By the early 1900s, the company was doing over $2,000,000 per year in business, and supplying seeds to 160,000 retail outlets. Ferry built a new warehouse, and by 1890 was doing over a million and a half dollars in business annually.

Ferry began to operate facilities outside Detroit. Operations in Charlevoix Michigan began when the train lines extended up to that area in 1892, and a large Charlevoix warehouse facility was built in 1905 along the lake near the new Chicago and West Michigan Railway line. A 200' pier ran out into Lake Charlevoix. Seeds were accumulated from local farms, brought to this warehouse by horse-drawn wagons, then bagged and shipped by rail or freight to Detroit. Charlevoix operations continued until 1927.

In 1905, Ferry sold one of their large corn fields to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. That property is located on the north side of Detroit at the city's northern limits, currently bordered by Second and Third Avenues on the east and west and by Burroughs and Amsterdam Avenues on the north and south.

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