Necrology

Herbert Braunfels Davison '38

Jun. 18, 1915-Oct. 14, 2003

Herbert Braunfels Davison ’38, who spent his entire working life in the carpet industry, was born on June 18, 1915, in Hightstown, NJ. The son of Charles Herbert Davison and the former Maude Outcalt, he prepared for college at the Berkshire School in Massachusetts and entered Hamilton from Princeton, NJ, in 1934. During his two years on the Hill he became a member of Sigma Phi and sang in the Choir. He left college to go to work in his family’s carpet manufacturing firm, Hightstown Rug Co.

While taking business courses at Pace Institute on the side, Herb Davison worked in virtually every phase of the company’s operations until he was appointed as its credit manager in 1939. His responsibilities later extended to sales when he took charge of the company’s showroom office in New York City. During World War II, when the company turned to manufacturing chest and back packs for paratroops, he became chief inspector for its parachute division. Promoted after the war to officer and director of the company, as well as its sister firm, Mercer Yarn Co. in Pennsylvania, he remained with the family business until 1969, when competition from imports and from Southern textile manufacturers forced its sale and subsequent liquidation. Thereafter, he was employed for two decades as an independently commissioned sales representative for carpet mills located in the South.

Herbert Davison, a longtime deacon and elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton and an active member of the Hightstown Historical Society, was devoted to the town where he was born. After his retirement in 1985 and the death of his wife, the former Dorothy S. Behrens, whom he had married in 1938 and with whom he had two children, he moved from Princeton to a retirement community in Meadow Lakes, Hightstown. There he met and soon married Margaret Buechner, a fellow resident.

Herbert B. Davison died at his home in Meadow Lakes on October 14, 2003. Predeceased by his second wife as well as a daughter, Nancy Johnson, he is survived by a son, John H. Davison, and three grandchildren.

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