Edwin Cornelius Dwyer

Founder of the Edwin C. Dwyer Company and father of Jerry Dwyer. Born on 8 July 1897 at Birch Cooley, Renville County, Minnesota; in 1905 at Newton Township, Otter Tail County; at Turlock, California, from about 1909. At 21 he registered for the draft as a worker for the Turlock Irrigation District, Camp 12 (record), and he served in the Army in the First World War.

He was living in San Francisco when he married Winifred Flynn at Portland, Oregon, in November 1935, and that year he moved to Seattle and started a printing-machinery sales and service firm, the Edwin C. Dwyer Company. In 1942 his draft card gives his employer as the Harry W. Brintnall Co., 2306 3rd Avenue, and notes “End off of second finger left hand” (record). Brintnall’s, of San Francisco, were the Pacific Coast distributors of bookbinding machinery, with a Seattle branch from at least 1934 (source). In 1950 he was the proprietor, working 48 hours a week, with Winifred as its stenographer, unpaid as family (record). That June the Miehle Printing Press Co., the maker of the Miehle presses, named the Edwin C. Dwyer Co. of Seattle and a Portland firm to stock Miehle repair parts and service its presses in the Northwest, and in 1954 one of the company’s men set up a new Miehle offset press at a Seattle printing plant. Knights of Columbus, Holy Name Society, the Craftsmen’s Club. He died at Seattle on 11 September 1969 (record). Their son Jerome, who had worked in the business under him, took it over, and Jerome’s son Eric after him (family knowledge). In the 1970s and 1980s the directories list Edwin C. Dwyer Co. Inc., printers’ supplies and equipment, at 126 Elliott Avenue West, with Jerome as president, Patricia as secretary-treasurer and Winifred as vice-president; it was still listed at Burien in 2014-15 (source).

In the records the tree attaches (not checked here):

• 1900. Newton, Otter Tail, Minnesota; marital status: Single; relation: Son (record)
• 1920. Turlock, Stanislaus, California; Occupation: Laborer; marital status: Single; relation: Son (record)
• 1935. San Francisco, California (record)
• 1940. Seattle, King, Washington; Occupation: Mechanic; marital status: Married; relation: Head (record)
• 1950. Seattle, King, Washington; Occupation: Proprietor; relation: Head; marital status: Married (record)
• Hotel Frye Seattle, Wash (record)
• Seattle, King, Washington (record)

Open questions

• His war service (unit, dates), and where he was in 1930: the “Elizabeth C., 32” in his parents’ 1930 household may be Edwin written in error.
• When the company began and how: his obituary has him starting it in 1935, but the 1940 census calls him a mechanic and his 1942 draft card names Brintnall’s as his employer. Washington corporation records and the Seattle directories of 1936-1965 would show it.
• The family’s house: 5605 6th Ave. S.W. as the 1942 card was read, or N.W. as the directories of 1966-1985 have it (St. Alphonsus, the funeral parish, is in Ballard, in the northwest). Re-read the card.
• The obituary’s “retired in 1944,” which the 1950 census contradicts.