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| The Gustavo Preston Company has been a privately owned, internally managed company with a history of supporting its clients and developing new markets for over 125 years. |
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| Mr. Preston was the son of a “Maine Yankee” who was Consul of the United States to Puerto Rico when the island was of Spanish possession. His mother, the daughter of an old-time Spanish family on the island, named him Gustavo. Gustavo was sent to the Blue Hill School in Maine where he received his education. |
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In 1881, when Gustavo Preston first founded the business in Boston, he acted as an agent for a producer of Malaga grapes in Spain and then for a Puerto Rican cigar manufacturer. He was also a principal supplier of molasses to the famed rum distilleries of Medford and Newburyport. Soon Mr. Preston had interests in several sugar mills, or centrals, a bay rum distillery, a cigar factory and a large grapefruit plantation. He was a pioneer in the first canning of grapefruit. |
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Upon Mr. Preston’s death in 1918, E. Harold Newhall, his business associate of 20 years, became managing partner and continued the firm’s activities in importing Puerto Rican products and exporting machinery and supplies to the island. In the meantime, historical changes that had occurred in areas of shipping and manufacturing had a negative impact on many of the firm’s markets. There was more direct representation on the island for machinery and supplies, and the volume of business in this area had diminished; refrigeration had changed the distribution of grapefruit and diminished the use of salt to the fishing industry; oil began to take over the market for coal; sailing ships were losing out to the larger and faster freighters; prohibition had eliminated the huge consumption of molasses; bay rum, which used to be found in every household as an universal medicament, was no longer being distilled from bay leaves and the emergence of other toiletries had reduced market flow to a comparative trickle; and Puerto Rican cigars were joining the buggy whip in volume. One area of the firm that had increased in volume was the import of honey. Sale of honey had grown from a single barrel, which one of the schooner captains had tossed in the hold, to enough to supply a large candy manufacturer in Boston. This created a demand for other types of foreign and domestic honey, and soon the firm was supplying upwards of a million pounds of honey annually to the candy manufacturers, confectioners and bakeries in New England. This activity was discontinued in 1941 when WWII began. |
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| In 1928, when Puerto Rican hurricanes devastated the property in which Mr. Preston originally had interests and for whom the firm acted as agents, the decision was made to incorporate the firm. Using the name of its founder, the newly incorporated Gustavo Preston Company augmented its sales engineering staff for the sale of compressors, pumps, heat exchangers, air and liquid filters and allied equipment in the New England area. |
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In 1935, following the death of E. Harold Newhall, William E. Doll became President and was succeeded on his death by Joel W. Reynolds, P.E., who had served as Vice President and Treasurer since the firm was incorporated in 1928. Upon Mr. Reynolds’s retirement in January of 1968, his interests were conveyed two men who had been associated with the company for more than 20 years: Rudolph L. Helgeson, P.E., as President and Treasurer, and Richard H. Pierce, P.E., as Vice President and Secretary. After many years of service, Dick Pierce, responsible for much of the company’s reputation of quality engineering and service, sold the company to Roberta Spence, a long-time, trusted employee. Roberta Spence carried that tradition and directed the company until 1994 at which time she approached her sales engineer, Maureen Pellegrini. It was at this point that David and Maureen Pellegrini, both graduates of Mass Maritime Academy and already experienced in the agency sales business, bought the company. Today, The Gustavo Preston Company maintains its reputation as a quality engineering sales and service company that bears the name of its founder. |
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