In the 1870s Robert, John, and James Connor arrived in Wood County in northern Wisconsin,
settling in Auburndale in 1871. The brothers cleared land for farming, laid out a plan for
the town, and purchased oak, maple, birch and pine forest lands. Robert and John operated a
general store for about 4 years, after which Robert bought John's share and formed the R.
Connor Company. The R. Connor Company expanded with the purchase of a second-hand sawmill in
1876 and the addition of a planing mill and blacksmith shop in 1878.
As a result of the panic of 1882-1883, John and James Connor moved to Iowa and Kansas.
Robert Connor continued the business with his eldest son, William Duncan Connor (1864-1944),
who concentrated on increasing timber purchases as his business strategy. When Robert Connor
was elected to the Wisconsin State Legislature in 1888, William took over the management of
the company. Two years later, William incorporated the company and in 1892 he became its
president.
William D. Connor proceeded to expand the R. Connor Company and its holdings. He purchased
lands along the Chicago and Northwestern Railway near the Rice Lake flowage. In 1891 he
founded the village of Stratford in Marathon County. A new band sawmill was built. By 1894,
the company was operating seven mills and had contracted the production from three
additional mills for a combined annual production of 40 to 50 million board feet. At the
same time, company houses, a company boarding house, a general store, and a post office were
built in Stratford. The R. Connor Company also constructed the Marathon County Railway to
connect with the Chicago and Northwestern, making possible the rail shipment of hardwoods
from northern Wisconsin.
The R. Connor Company continued its expansion at a time when other lumber companies
suffered from the 1892-1893 panic and depression. William D. Connor purchased thousands of
acres, often at reduced prices, in northern Ashland, Iron, and Forest counties as well as
land in Florida, California, and British Columbia. As a result of these purchases, he had to
resort to the use of lumber company “script” to pay the workers in 1892 and
1893, but the company survived the depression.
In 1896 William D. Connor founded Laona, a company town in northern Wisconsin. It was
there, in 1900, that he founded the Connor Lumber and Land Company with a directorate
separate from the R. Connor Company. The relationship between the Connor Lumber and Land
Company and the R. Connor Company is uncertain. In 1902, the Connor Lumber and Land Company,
in association with the R. Connor Company and the Marathon County Railway Company, formed
the Laona and Northern Railway Company and built an eighteen-mile line connecting the
Chicago and Northwestern line to the Soo Line's Laona junction. As business improved in the
first decade of the century, a cedar shingle mill was added and a large flooring factory was
established. Company holdings diversified to include land, milling operations, retail
lumber, a farm, the Hotel Gordon, banks, railroads, motor companies, a public utility, and
an insurance company.
William D. Connor's two eldest sons, William D. Jr. and Richard M., began working in the
Connor Lumber and Land Company in the 1920s. William D. Connor Sr. became president of a
related company, the Canadian Puget Sound Lumber and Timber Company, but his input into the
original company he founded remained substantial. With William D. Connor Jr. as general
manager in Laona and Richard Connor as woods manager, the company continued its
diversification into by-products such as sawdust, juvenile furniture, shingle tow, shavings,
and maple heel stock. During the late 1920s, the Connor Lumber and Land Company became a
pioneer in placing timberland under the Wisconsin Forest Crop Act and the Michigan Pearson
Act. During this time, the lumber company began to apply principles of perpetual harvest
selective cutting.
In the mid-1920s, William D. Connor Sr. acquired hardwood stands in the Upper Peninsula for
the R. Connor Company Initially, the company disposed of logs through contracts with the
Ford Motor Company, the Menasha Woodware Company, and the Duluth and South Shore Railway,
but the Depression caused a decline in this market. During this critical period William D.
Connor Sr.'s youngest son, Gordon R. Connor, joined the family business. In 1929, after
graduating from the University of Wisconsin in business administration and finance, he began
managing the Stratford operations of the R. Connor Company. By 1934 the R. Connor Company
ceased operations in Stratford and moved to its Michigan lands. A railway line and new mill
were constructed on a site near Wakefield, named Connorville. The mill was barely in
operation when in 1935 the R. Connor Company was placed under Section 77-B, a Depression-era
form of semi-bankruptcy. A reorganization plan was eventually accepted and the company's
assets were taken over by the Connor Lumber and Land Company. The Connor Lumber and Land
Company's business, especially that of the Wakefield operation, improved after 1937.
An intense battle between the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (A.F.L.) and the
International Woodworkers of America (CIO) to organize the company took place in 1937. A
strike against the Laona operations was called in 1938, and the result was a victory by the
CIO in a National Labor Relations Board election in 1940.
Richard M. Connor succeeded William Jr. as company manager when William Jr. entered the
Navy in 1942. Richard was an active leader in the Maple Floor Association. After William Sr.
died in 1944, Richard became president, and Gordon became the vice president. In 1946,
Melvin Laird Sr., who had served as corporate secretary, first for the R. Connor Company and
later for Connor Lumber and Land Company, was succeeded in that post by his wife, Helen
Connor Laird. In 1956 the Richard and Gordon Connor families bought out the interests of the
Lairds, Modralls, Rhyners, and the William D. Connor Jr. families and the company offices
were moved from Marshfield to Wausau. The Connor company continued to expand its land
holdings in Wisconsin and Michigan during the 1950s, despite the earlier loss of 5000 acres
of land to the Michigan Porcupine Mountain State Wilderness Park (1944) and the sale of its
Canadian interests (1945).
By the mid-1950s, the company's veneer and plywood manufacturing operations had closed, and
a transition was made to kitchen cabinet production at the Wausau plant under the direction
of Gordon P. Connor (a fourth generation family member). By 1965, when Richard M. Connor
became chairman of the board and Gordon R. Connor company president, Laona operations
included nursery furniture, lumber, flooring, wood flour, plastics, and other by-products.
Gordon Connor was also active in industry affairs, serving as organizer and president of the
Timber Producers Association of Upper Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as being active in
several other industry organizations. To reflect its wider product diversification, in 1968
the Connor Lumber and Land Company changed its name to Connor Forest Industries. A year
later, the company began the manufacture of wood toys, puzzles, and blocks. Additional land
in Michigan was purchased so that by 1972 the company owned nearly 250,000 acres of timber
in Wisconsin and Michigan. In 1982, many of the Connor Forest Industries' interests were
sold to a Swiss firm. Remaining in the Connor family is the “Camp Five” museum,
established in Laona in 1969 as an educational, historical, and recreational complex
designed to preserve the logging town as an historic site.
