LESLIE LEWIS DOUD was born May 24, 1863 at Carthage, New York, the son of Chauncy Doud and Louise Levis. Chauncy was a successful machinery man in Jefferson County but soon after Leslie's birth saw better opportunities in Minnesota than in upstate New York. His family migrated to Winona, MN, when Leslie was 3 years old and his father became the general superintendent for Doud Sons & Co. cooperage (barrel) manufacturers, one of the largest of its kind in the West. It was founded by another relative named Chauncy Doud (Leslie's great uncle) and had factories at Winona, Minneapolis, Stillwater and Mankato. The company made the majority of the barrels in which Minnesota flour was shipped.
Young Leslie attended the public schools in Winona until he was 10 years old when his father moved them to Glendale, Wisconsin, and began the erection of a stave factory. A few years later the family moved to Worden, Wisconsin, where another stave factory was built. Leslie finished school in Worden and at the age of 16, left home to start out on his own.
Leslie first went to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he entered the employ of Doud Sons & Co., and learned the cooperage business. He worked at that trade at various places up and down the Mississippi River for six years and at the age of 22 went to Pittsville, Wisconsin, where he entered partnership with H. J.Miller in the hardware business.
In Pittsville Leslie met Flora Adell Clapper who was born on March 14, 1858, in Hopewell, NY, the daughter of George and Eliza Clapper. They were married in Grand Rapids, WI, on October 31, 1885.
The firm of Doud & Miller lasted six months, at the end of which Leslie's father, Chauncy, purchased Miller's share and the firm became known as Doud & Son. Within two years Leslie bought out his father and ran the business under his own name.
In those days northern Wisconsin was growing fast. Hardware, machinery and agricultural implements were in great demand. For 15 years Leslie operated the most prosperous retail store in the state. In 1900 Leslie incorporated under the name of Pittsville Hardware Company.
Then he began to hear about Puget Sound.
Leslie's two brothers, Chester and Willard, were in the Northwest and doing immensely well. Soon after he incorporated his hardware business, Leslie traveled to Washington to look the country over. Tacoma was the first place he landed and he liked the growing waterfront town. He returned to Wisconsin, sold the controlling stock of the Pittsville Hardware Company and moved his family west.
After arriving in Tacoma, Leslie decided that the lumber manufacturing business was the best prospect and, with his two brothers, began milling timbers with a 60,000 foot per day mill at Pittsburg, near Buckley. The firm was known as Doud Brothers Lumber Company and operated with great success. In the meantime, the three brothers were acquiring valuable fir timber in Pierce and Mason counties. In early 1906 they decided that they wanted to have a mill nearer civilization and shipping facilities (both rail and cargo) and bought a site on the waterfront, just south of the Tacoma smelter. The Defiance Lumber Company incorporated that year with a capitalization of $275,000 and the mill was soon built. By 1907 the company owned 18 acres with 1,400 feet of shoreline and employed 150 men.
The mill was said to be without peer in Western Washington for that time. In 1909 the Tacoma Daily Ledger reported that the mill "has a circular head saw and a band resaw, the 10 hour capacity being 100,000 feet. It is located directly on deep water and ships of all nations are constantly loading lumber at its wharves. Rail connections are had directly with the Northern Pacific railroad and the Milwaukee Terminal Company's new Front Street line."
Leslie was elected to the Tacoma City Council, 8th ward, by a vote of 141 to his two opponents' combined total of 61, on March 5, 1905. He ran as a Republican. Two years later he was re-elected 121 to 82 and was voted president of the sixteen member council. He acknowledged his peers saying, "Gentlemen: I thank you for this election and assure you that I will endeavor always to be fair in my rulings and to facilitate the business of the council all that is possible". Issues brought before the council during his term included the reorganization of the city light department, the proposed construction of a tunnel beneath Point Defiance, free transportation for city employees on the street railway and establishing the "Cleaner Tacoma" committee to clean up the trash and dirty alleys in downtown Tacoma.
The Tacoma Daily Ledger in a lengthy article about Leslie written in 1909, stated:
"Conspicuous among the services rendered Tacoma by Mr. Doud as a dominant city builder was a four-year incumbency of the thankless job of city councilman. He represented the 8th ward and he has the enviable reputation of being the best councilman that division of the city ever produced. The feature of his tenure was that he did his level best to persuade the council to do things on a business-like basis. The petty bickerings and wire-pullings in which city councils since time immemorial have specialized jarred Doud's sense of the eternal fitness of things. He could not figure out why some councilmen will pull opposite directions for things which work to nothing but the welfare of the community. Lots of people didn't like Doud as a councilman because he wanted to see the city run on the same principle as a lumber mill or a department store is run - to get results. For four years he held the job and then, feeling that he had done his share, he gave way to somebody else. He is missed mightily and could go back again if he wanted to. But it isn't likely that he will ever want to in view of the present indications of the abolition of the council in favor of a commission.
"Mr. Doud is a prominent member of the Afifi temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, as well as the Commercial Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Tacoma Golf and Country Club. But mostly he is prominent as a level headed, get-down-to-brass-tacks business man, who makes a great big success of his own affairs and sets an admirable example for others"
In 1913 the West Coast Trade's New Year edition listed Defiance Lumber Company with a capital stock of $275,000, 250 employees, a monthly payroll of $18,000 and a total output figure for 1912 of $350,000.
The Tacoma Daily Ledger wrote an article in August 1929 announcing their addition of a new Swedish gang type sawmill that was particularly adapted to smaller logs. Another 1929 newspaper article in the Tacoma News Tribune, discussing the history of the company, said:
"The capacity of the plant [in 1906] was about 60,000 feet a day. Practically all of this was rough lumber. Six years later a dry kiln and planing mill was added to the equipment which made possible, in addition to the water borne shipping, the sale of large shipments of finished and dried lumber to the interior of the United States, chiefly the middle west [via rail].
After the World War the plant was practically rebuilt and at the same time partly electrified. Shipping by rail was cut off almost entirely. The whole output was again loaded into ships that since that time have carried it pretty well over the world... Except for a market in California, where a branch office is maintained, the entire output of the mill, now grown to 300,000 feet a day, goes to Japan, the United Kingdom and to Germany... As for the personnel, it has grown until the payroll approximates $500,000 a year. At the head of the firm is one of its founders, L. L. Doud, whose two sons, Lee L. and D. H. Doud conduct the business."
Leslie's wife, Flora, died on December 16, 1931. Leslie followed her a few years later on November 3, 1934. The Defiance Lumber Company (later renamed the Defiance Mill Co.) continued in business until it closed its doors on December 6, 1951.
They had 5 children all of whom had been born in Pittsville, WI:
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