Gilbert Aubrey Davidson (1869-1958)
G. Aubrey Davidson was founder and president of the Southern Trust & Savings Bank and its successor, the Southern Trust & Commerce Bank of San Diego. Long a resident of San Diego and for many years an official of the Santa Fe Railway, Mr. Davidson had the financial backing of several Santa Fe officials when he promoted the bank in 1907.
The Southern Trust & Savings Bank was chartered July 1, 1907 with a capital stock of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and began business October 1st in the U. S. Grant Building. Its initial deposits were a little over a quarter of a million, and the total had increased almost three-fold in a year. The deposits passed the two-million mark in 1912 and the institution has grown and expanded every year since its establishment. The Southern Trust and Commerce Bank, while its headquarters were still in the U. S. Grant Hotel Building, operated four branches, at El Centro, Brawley, Coronado and La Jolla. During 1919 the gain in deposits was approximately two million eight hundred thousand dollars, while from July 1, 1919, to July 1, 1920, the increase in deposits was nearly five millions. The total aggregate of deposits in April, 1921, was approximately thirteen million dollars, the main bank and its branches serving twenty-five thousand depositors.
Gilbert Aubrey Davidson was born at Kentville, Nova Scotia, June 21, 1868 [tombstone says 1869], son of George Albert and Eliza J. (Palmeter) Davidson. His parents, who were natives of Nova Scotia, took up their residence at San Diego in 1886. Mr. Davidson was educated in Kings County Academy at Kentville, and his early business experience was acquired with the Dominion Atlantic Railway in Nova Scotia as general clerk, subsequently as ticket agent and telegraph operator. He was eighteen when he came to San Diego in 1886 and in December of that year became bookkeeper in the office of the Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, whose general offices were then in San Diego. The general offices were removed to Los Angeles in 1888, at which time he became cashier and paymaster for the lines west of Albuquerque, and retained that post of duty with the Santa Fe for seventeen years. In 1905 he was made auditor for the coast lines, but resigned and gave up a railroad career in 1907 to return to San Diego and organize the Southern Trust & Savings Bank. Mr. Davidson is also president of the East San Diego State Bank of East San Diego, president of the State Bank of Ramona, San Diego County, and during the war period was state director of War Savings for the Government for the southern half of the State of California, with general offices at Los Angeles.
During 1909-1910, Davidson served as president of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and was instrumental in making that body an effective factor in realizing San Diego's advantages as a commercial center, seaport and place of residence. In 1909, he proposed plans for a World's Fair in San Diego, to call attention to the city and bolster an economy still shaky from the Wall Street panic of 1907. The Chamber of Commerce authorized Davidson to appoint a committee to look into the idea. The result was the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-1916, which forever changed the face of Balboa Park and the future of San Diego. Davidson was elected president of the Exposition in 1914, and on April 12, 1914, rode in the first car to be driven across the newly-constructed Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Mayor Charles F. O'Neall.
[from City of San Diego and San Diego County by Clarence Alan McGrew, Vol II, published 1922 by the American Historical Society, Chicago and New York]
Davidson married Rosetta Harben at Los Angeles October 21, 1896. He was President of the YMCA, Trustee of the First Presbyterian Church.
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