The Laird and Norton families left Northern Ireland in the 1700s and arrived in Pennsylvania before moving West as part of Westward Expansion. The families then settled in Winona, Minnesota, on the ancestral lands of the Wahpeton people. There, William H. Laird and his cousins, Matthew G. Norton and James Laird Norton, began investing in lumber together, forming the Laird, Norton & Co in 1856.
The original logging and lumberyard operation was the first of several family-owned companies, first in the Midwest, later in the Pacific Northwest, as well as other places in the West. Today, Laird Norton Company, LLC is still a privately owned and operated family business. |