The boat in the barn. The Dan Kidney Launch.
We’re often asked, “Do you ever find any old boats in barns anymore?” Every time we think we’ve found them all and that those days are over, sure enough another shows up. It’s always a great story and the Dan Kidney Launch is one of them. At the 2006 Minneapolis boat show a couple approached us saying they wanted to talk to somebody about an old boat they inherited. Out of their pockets came envelopes and some pictures of a boat - and it was really an early piece. The pictures were dated 1953. The woman talked about her dad, his involvement with the St. Paul Yacht Club and the history of the boat in the pictures. She showed us a letter dated 1954 from an old friend by the name of Westin Farmer. Farmer was famous naval architect in the 30’s and 40’s. He wrote for Popular Mechanics – including a feature entitled, “20 Boats You Can Build.” He sold boat plans his entire life and when he passed on in 1976 we were fortunate enough to receive his collection of Yachting, Motor Boating and Rudder magazines from before WWII. Anyway this letter signed by Westin Farmer talked about the boat in the picture - a 1903 Dan Kidney launch.
Farmer’s letter stated that if they ever wanted to sell their boat to make sure they contacted him. The couple explained that their father never did sell the boat and that it was still in the same garage that it had been parked in since 1954. The garage was actually an old hay barn, built in the 1800’s. We went with them out to the barn, opened up the doors and there was the boat in the pictures – a boat that had sat, untouched and unmolested, for 54 years. It was even sitting on a farm wagon with wood spoke wheels! The boat was in original paint and trim, although the original engine had been replaced somewhere in it’s life.
We’ve only seen one other reference to this boat - in Bob Speltz’s books “The Real Runabouts.” We believe that this boat came from the Wisconsin side of the Winona/LaCrosse area and was most likely originally fitted with a Red Wing one cylinder engine. To find a boat that’s been in storage for 55 years, that’s now 105 years old, in an old barn in downtown St. Paul is a pretty great story. And this Dan Kidney launch is an original example and a real treat to have in our permanent collection.
The Kidney and Sons Boat Factory was built as a home workshop when Kidney was employed at a sawmill and a shipyard. He began by building a duck skiff and some decoys. After he sold the first one, world of it’s quality spread and demand rose. He found it necessary to expand his business by 1874. He built a two-story factory, followed, after an 1891 fire, by a 40,000 square-foot establishment that employed forty workers. They made rowboats, skiffs, canoes, hunting boats and ‘gasoline launches’ using steam-powered equipment and handwork. Kidney died in 1925, but the company remained until the 1960’s, when demand for wooden boats declined.
