Rural General Stores in the 1800's

In the preface to “The History of Canaan, New Hampshire”, James Wallace, William Allen Wallace's son, explains that his father died before he was able to finish his book. James actually finished the book after his father's death, and had it published. James states that most of the events in the book took place before 1860, because, “the strenuous life of this town happened before that date. Since the Rebellion, the life of the people has run smoothly. History is not made in that way.”

I definitely have found this to be the case throughout the Upper Valley. Almost every town has a fascinating, well-written town history that ends with the Civil War. One possible explanation for this is the opposite of what James Wallace says. The Civil War and the changes that followed it were so cataclysmic that people longed to remember a simpler, gentler time; a time when heroes were really heroes. They could look back at the town founders and civic leaders, like Oliver Farnsworth, Simeon Ide and Nathaniel Currier, and find men to venerate and look up to as stalwart individuals who were honest and brave, men who stood up for what was right, men who fought the odds and remained true to their beliefs, standards of the past life when it seemed like currently, things were running amuck.

Nathaniel Currier had two sons who became merchants. William Wallace tells us that Horace was employed in his father's store, and partnered with James Wallace until James died in 1853. Horace was married and had six children. He died in 1866 at age 48. Horace's brother Franklin, was also a merchant.

Frank was five years younger than Horace. He was born in 1823 and didn't get married until he was 51, and then to a woman 25 years younger than he was. Her name was Ella Minton, and she and Frank got married in 1874. They had two children, Ella and John. Ella was born the same year they were married, and John was born six years later, in 1880.

Horace and Frank followed their father's footsteps, becoming storekeepers in an era of rapid change. General stores had always been the center of life in a rural village. In areas with no general store, farm families had to either produce absolutely everything they ate, used or wore, or they had to travel long distances to purchase items they couldn't make or grow. General stores made it possible for farm families to specialize in making certain items, and buying or bartering for other necessities. Before the Civil War, necessities were all anyone could afford. After the war was over, the American economy grew so quickly that even farm families from rural New Hampshire could afford a few luxuries.

General stores often had large windows on either side of the front door. One window showed women's items and the other showed men's items. Sometimes store owners wanted their store to look bigger than it was, so they put a false front onto their store to make it look taller and more impressive. I don't think this was common in the Upper Valley, though. One building that does have a false front is the Good Buy Store in Wilder. Come to think of it, that building has the two big windows on either side of the door as well. Anyway, when you hear people talk about someone who “puts up a front”, this is where that saying comes from. Back in the day, it meant to put a fake front on a store to make it look higher, and now it means to act like things are better than they are.

 

                    19th century Michigan General store        Good Buy Store - 2013  

In the early 1800's, storekeepers did a lot of their trading by barter, because there wasn't much money in circulation. The store owner would sell items, and take other items in trade. Often merchandise wasn't marked with the price like it is now. The storekeepers would use a code to mark both the cost of the item and the price of the item on every piece of merchandise in the store. They would use a ten letter word or phrase, and assign each letter a digit from 0 – 9, then they would mark the merchandise with tags in code. Thus FAT COW MILK would stand for 123 456 7890. A lantern that cost the merchant $2.00, that the merchant would like to trade for another item worth $2.50, would have a tag that read AKK on the top and A OK on the bottom.

After the Civil War, more people had money, and general stores began to mark their merchandise with prices. Rather than barter, storeowners paid people money for food and merchandise, and the people who sold them the items could use the money to buy what they wanted. This is about the time cash registers first came into use.

A saloon keeper in Dayton Ohio, James Ritty, patented the cash register in 1879. He invented the cash register to stop his employees from pocketing money when they sold drinks. Cash registers

made it impossible to access cash until a sale was made. Then, the employee had to punch the keys to record the sale, and at the end of the transaction the cash drawer opened. At the same time the drawer opened, a bell went off, signaling to the owner of the store or saloon that a sale had been made. There is a theory that this is what started odd sales prices, because a store employee would have to open the cash register to give a penny's worth of change to someone buying an item for $1.99, thereby making a record of the sale and keeping the employee honest. This debunks the myth of everyone being so honest and trustworthy in the “good old days”.

General stores usually carried produce, groceries, dry goods, housewares and hardware. Produce was fruits and vegetables. Groceries was all of your other cooking supplies, especially baking ingredients, spices, coffee, tea and sugar. Dry goods was paper, cloth, and the sundry items associated with them, like pins, needles, thread, ink and fountain pens. Housewares were what the women needed to do their jobs, like flour sifters, cutlery, irons, washtubs, and other items needed to run a household. Hardware was what it is today, mostly nails, screws, and hand tools. Many of these items could have been made by a blacksmith, who sold them to the storekeeper.

There were no paper bags or boxes (and certainly no plastic). Housewives brought their own cloth bags, baskets or crockery to carry goods home in. They carried coffee, flour and sugar in their own cloth bags. They used crockery to carry liquid, like molasses, vinegar, honey, or in the Upper Valley, maple sugar. Storeowners would sell dry goods in bags, but they charged extra for the bags. Small purchases were wrapped in paper. Some small goods, like seeds or candy, were sold in a poke. The person selling the goods would rip a length of brown paper from a roll, shape it into a cone, and pour the dry goods into it. This was called a poke.

People who lived a way from town would only come in to buy from the store every month or so. I'm sure the Curriers had many customers for whom a trip to the store was a real occasion. In this day, eight or ten miles out of town was a real journey, and many families came into town one Saturday a month, or even one Saturday a season. For others who may have been poorer, a trip to town happened once or twice a year. These store customers bought in bulk, and brought their purchases home in huge cloth sacks and wooden barrels, in the back of their farm wagons.

Customers could walk through the store and look at merchandise and pick out what they wanted from the dry goods section, housewares and hardware. When it came to groceries, they would go to the counter with an order and the grocer would fill their order. There weren't name brands like there are today. Most of the groceries were locally grown or milled. Coffee, tea, molasses and sugar were imported by the grocer and everyone's order was taken from the same barrel.

There is a story that the word “counter” came from a medieval method of tallying up purchases. Our Arabic numerical system had not been adopted by Europeans in the Middle Ages, so storekeeper in very early medieval towns had no way to tally amounts of purchases. They developed a flat board that had grooves in it. They would place discs in the grooves, with each disc standing for a certain amount or number of goods the customer was buying. Then the customer would be charged, almost certainly in trade, for the amount of goods he bought. Eventually, the “counter” became a fixed part of the very early store, and transactions took place over the “counter”. There is evidence of this type of counter being used at Jamestowne in very early Virginia.

Of course, we really don't know what Currier's store was like. We do know that they sold rum. Every general store sold some types of groceries, dry goods, housewares, and hardware. I'm pretty sure they did not have a fake front – don't ask me why, but I just doubt they did. They may or may not have used a code to price their merchandise. No matter what, it's fun to speculate about what they sold, and what the inside of the stores looked like.