Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray
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The Right Honourable The Viscount Cowdray GCVO PC |
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Lord Cowdray.
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| President of the Air Board | |
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In office 3 January 1917 – 26 November 1917 |
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| Monarch | George V |
| Prime Minister | David Lloyd George |
| Preceded by | The Earl Curzon of Kedleston |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Rothermere |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 15 July 1856 Shelley Woodhouse, Yorkshire |
| Died | 1 May 1927 |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse(s) | Annie Pearson (née Cass), Viscountess Cowdray |
Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, GCVO, PC (15 July 1856 – 1 May 1927), known as Sir Weetman Pearson, Bt, between 1894 and 1910 and as The Baron Cowdray between 1910 and 1917, was a British engineer, oil industrialist, benefactor and Liberal politician. He was the owner of the Pearson conglomerate.
Pearson was born at Shelley, Woodhouse, Yorkshire, the son of George Pearson and Sarah Weetman Dickinson.
The Pearson firm, started by his grandfather Samuel in 1844 and today known as a publishing house, initially focused on construction. He took over the company in 1880, eventually moving the headquarters from Yorkshire to London. An early proponent of globalization, S. Pearson & Son built the Admiralty Harbour at Dover, docks in Halifax, tunnels, railways and harbours around the world, and the Sennar Dam in Sudan.
In 1900 his company took over the construction of the Great Northern and City Railway in London and after completion in 1904 ran it for four years.
In 1889, Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico, invited Pearson to his country to build a railroad—the Tehuantepec Railway—from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. On one of Pearson's trips to Mexico, Pearson missed a rail connection in Laredo, Texas and was obliged to spend the night in the town which, according to Pearson, was "wild with the oil craze" from the recent discovery of oil at Spindletop. After doing some quick research that night about oil seepages in Mexico, Pearson began acquiring prospective oil lands in Laredo, thinking he could use discovered oil to fuel the Tehuantepec Railway he was helping President Diaz build.
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