Fifty years with the Revere Copper Co. / A Paper Read at the Stockholders' Meeting held on Monday 24 March 1890

The Company was incorporated and organized in the year 1828. In 1840, all the original corporators, or associates, were living. Other stockholders from their families were afterwards added, but they all, the first associates and the others subsequently admitted, have passed away. It follows that, at the present time, there is no other one living who has been brought into daily business intercourse with the members of this Company from its very beginning.
It would therefore seem to be a very proper and fitting thing for me, on so interesting an occasion, to review somewhat the personnel of the Company.

Preliminary thereto, however, a brief historical statement should be made of the beginnings of the enterprises to which the Company succeeded.

In the years 1804 and 1805 Mr. J. W. Revere spent considerable time on a visit to England and the continent for the purpose of obtaining all the information possible in the prosecution of their undertaking.
Their business grew slowly, but it made a steady progress until substantially established. Colonel Revere died in 1818, but the son, Mr. Joseph W. Revere, continued on with the manufactory started at Canton until it became a part of the incorporated Company.

Singularly coincident with the events already narrated, Mr. James Davis, but five months younger than Mr. Joseph W. Revere, had come to Boston from Barnstable, his native town, and acquired here a trade, reaching his majority in 1798.
In the very first years of the present century he established himself on Union Street as a brass founder. Here he continued, gradually expanding the business until the admission of his son, Mr. James Davis, Jr., as a partner, January 4, 1828, when the firm-name of James Davis & Son was adopted.
These two enterprises naturally ran along very much together in certain respects. For instance, in their trade with shipbuilders, which was an important feature with each; while the foundry was turning out composition castings required for fastenings, the mill was preparing copper in its various forms for use on the same vessel.