The Dotson Company is a manufacturing business founded in 1876 as a blacksmith shop in Mankato, MN. At the time of the records acquisition (2021), the company remained a privately held corporation owned by the Dotson family. Since their founding, they made boilers, trip hammers, steam shovels, steel beams, structural iron parts for buildings, road graders, tractors, and a variety of other items. In the 1890s, they produced specialty items including metal bars for jails.

In 1876, Laurentius (aka, Laurence and Lorenz) Mayer began his own blacksmith shop at 802 North Front Street in Mankato, MN after immigrating to the area in 1871. By 1891, his three sons, Lorenz L., Conrad, and Louis had enough experience as blacksmiths to start their own business on Vine Street. By 1894 they expanded their father’s business on Front Street by building a foundry on the same site as their father’s blacksmith shop and started production of the Little Giant trip hammer.

The brothers incorporated as the Mayer Brothers Manufacturing Company in 1891. After three years, Conrad established a separate business, and Lorenz and Louis continued to operate. In 1901, a fire damaged the 802 North Front Street facility and the company purchased land and buildings on West Rock Street from the defunct Rocky Mill Company, a former flourmill. They converted the old flourmill and built a new structure next to it as the machine shop and foundry.

In 1903, the company incorporated again as the Mayer Brothers Incorporated, with Louis as president, Lorenz as secretary-treasurer, and Henry F. Leonard, a local Mankato businessman, as the vice president. By 1907 the company struggled financially and in 1909 they reincorporated once more as Mayer Brothers Company.

Also in 1907, Louis and Lorenz Mayer created the Little Giant Company, named for their most valuable and popular production item, the Little Giant trip hammer. The Little Giant hammer became a standard of the industry. By 1915, however, Louis and Lorenz Mayer lost control of both companies to investors concerned about financial stability. Louis and Lorenz Mayer ended up moving to Wisconsin. During the transition in 1915-1917, the Mayer Brothers name was dropped, and the company became known simply as the Little Giant Company, held in trusteeship controlled by the First National Bank in Mankato.

In 1923, the Little Giant president George Palmer, president of the First National Bank, hired Leonard Joseph Fazendin to manage the company. In 1937, the company declared bankruptcy and sold assets at a sheriff’s auction. Charles Butler, previous Vice President of the local newspaper The Free Press and a Minneapolis businessman, and Fazendin’s brother-in-law, purchased the company assets. Fazendin continued managing the company and purchased the company from Butler by 1944.

In 1943, Fazendin hired his son-in-law, Gerald A. Dotson, Sr. to work at the company and the two entered into a partnership and the Dotson Company emerged. Fazendin and Dotson expanded the foundry including the purchase of the Sartre Foundry in Faribault, reorganized as the Fairview Corporation. In 1952, Dotson and his wife, Mary K. (Fazendin) Dotson, purchased majority control of the company and The Dotson Company emerged in the late 1950s as the parent company. In 1967, The Dotson Company again expanded its operations by providing ductile iron casting and production. Gerald A. Dotson, Sr. served as president from 1952 until his death in 1978, and James Dennis Dotson served as president from 1978 until 2014, after which he remained as Chair of the Board. The Dotson Company produces iron casting metal products for local, regional, national, and international clients and companies.

Over the years a number of subsidiary companies grew out of the main foundry operations. The Zabel-Getty Manufacturing Company produced potato pickers in the 1920s. Two farmers near Mankato created the product and the Little Giant Company produced the patterns, manufactured the machines in the foundry, and acted as the sales manager. The company discontinued production by 1925. Under Fazendin’s management, the company manufactured two different lines of products for which some records can be found. The first focused on plumbing supplies such as floor drains, roof drains, and plugs under the FULCO line and under the name of the Fuller Company. The Fuller Company stopped production by 1943. Other subsidiary companies have included Dotson Enterprises, E.F. Leasing, Fairview Oaks Inc., Foundry Collection, Marcar and Eighty/20, and People Driven Performance.

In May 2023, MacLean Power Systems from Fort Mill, SC acquired Dotson Iron Castings.