April 3: David Kenney, "Father of the Vacuum Cleaner Industry"

Note: Great Lives is honored to present our first guest blogger, Mary Robinson Sive, who contributed this life story to the Great Lives blog. Mary is the author of Lost villages: historic driving tours in the Catskills as well as other works.

An almost forgotten New Jersey inventor was a pioneer in the vacuum cleaner industry long before this appliance became a standard piece of equipment in most households. Historical accounts often do not give this self-taught and self-made man credit, some dismissing him as a “New Jersey plumber;” others not mentioning him at all. Yet the patents he received between 1903 and 1913 placed him at the center of the American vacuum cleaner industry in the first two decades of the 20th century. In 1910 the New York Times called him the “father of the vacuum cleaner industry.”

The son of Irish immigrants, Kenney at age 15 was apprenticed to a plumber and soon had his own business with offices in New Jersey and New York City. In the 1890s he received patents for a “Flushometer” (to flush toilets) and other plumbing devices that proved quite profitable. Soon he joined the many other inventors who sought to improve housecleaning by mechanical means. By 1902 he installed a steam engine in Pittsburgh that could suck dust out of all parts of a large building.

(Frick Building 1902 installation)
An English engineer, H. Cecil Booth, coined the term “vacuum cleaner” for his truck-mounted invention. He applied for a US patent during the time that Kenney also had several patent applications pending. Kenney received his most significant patent in 1907 after a six-year wait. The Englishman’s application for a US patent was now moot.

According to a 1906 ad Kenney's firm counted the White House and the New York Times building among its customers for stationary central vacuum systems. Two years later it was chosen to install such a system in New York's Singer Building, at the time the world’s tallest office structure, and later provided such service in the US Treasury building.

In a highly competitive environment Kenney was aggressive in pursuing his business interests. He was successful in several lawsuits alleging patent infringement and eventually gave up manufacturing in favor of licensing other companies.

Portable vacuum cleaners came into their own after James Spangler received a patent in 1909 for one powered by electricity and sold it to William Henry Hoover, a name still recognized. But electric power was far from universally available, and a market existed for hand-operated cleaners. Sears Roebuck began offering three versions of such machines the same year.

Anyone living on a farm or in a small town who hoped to clean floors in a modern manner had to use a vacuum cleaner operated by hand. And that vacuum most likely used the nozzle patented by Kenney.

Most of the manual vacuums that survive are of a plunger type (shown in the middle above) that functioned somewhat like a bicycle pump in reverse, with the operator pushing the handle down a tube, then pulling it back up and depositing dust in a container. Other models required operation by two individuals. Sears offered a money-back guarantee on the three models advertised, but within eight years the manually operated cleaners were gone from the catalog and only electric ones were shown. Perhaps word got around that they weren’t really “labor-saving devices.” Women who grew up in farm homes in the 1920s and 1930s remember seeing manual cleaners, but they don’t actually remember their mothers ever using them much.
Manual vacuum cleaners are described in few books dealing with home life or homemaking during the pre-World War I period. Women’s history institutions have no photographs. More examples are found in small local history collections than in major museums. The Hoover Company’s Historical Center in Canton, OH has a number of these appliances, but the largest number is held by a private collector (vachunter.com)

In 1920 1,024,167 vacuum cleaners were sold for a total of $35 million, most undoubtedly electric. The industry for whose growth he was given so much credit by his contemporaries was well-established. Kenney now turned his inventive skills to yet another field and received his last patent in 1920, this for a heating system designed to improve the distribution of heat from a wood-burning fireplace.

The income from his various patents enabled Kenney to pursue other business interests, including real estate transactions beginning early in his career. During the long wait for the 1907 patent Kenney asked the Sisters of Mercy, an order of Catholic nuns who were his daughter’s teachers, to pray for him. His donations beginning in 1905 and continuing to the end of his life totaled over 70 acres and enabled Mt. St. Mary’s College, founded by the order in 1873, to move to a site near his manufacturing operations. He took an active part in the planning of the buildings for the school, which opened in 1908 with elementary and secondary classes and included seven girls in a college department. The school continues as a girls’ prep school with several hundred students. Kenney’s generosity resulted in his being made a Papal Chamberlain by Pope Pius X in 1906. Other civic activities included service on the board of a hospital and of a reform school.

Booth’s name appears in the British Dictionary of National Biography and in biographical reference works dealing with technology. The vacuum cleaners he invented and manufactured are held in London’s Science Museum. Kenney’s name cannot be found in corresponding American reference books, the Library of Congress’ “American Memory” or its Prints and Photographs Collection, nor in the Smithsonian Institution. While the courts uniformly held his patents applicable to portable household cleaners as well as to central installations, the industry largely shifted away from the systems serving entire buildings that he had pioneered in this country. His vacuum cleaner patents survived David Kenney by a few years. He committed suicide in May 1922. His body was found near Beacon, NY, after he had been missing about ten days. He had been in ill health for some years and had recently lost his wife and a sister. He was long forgotten by the 1980s, when the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame was inaugurated with names like Edison and Einstein.

February 26: John Harvey Kellogg, Crown Prince of Cereal

Very likely most Americans recognize the name – it’s seen every time one visits the breakfast cereal section of the grocery store. But the man behind the development of a new style of food for breakfast cereals was a pioneer in the wellness movement - but not a partner in the company that made corn flake cereal famous.

John Harvey Kellogg was born on February 26, 1852, in Tyrone, New York. He would move to Battle Creek, Michigan at an early age with his parents, John Preston and Ann Jeanette Stanley Kellogg. His parents were devout Seventh-day Adventists, and this would have a bearing on John Kellogg’s life, occupation, and fame. His father operated a broom factory there where Kellogg would work with his father. He also served as a ‘printer’s devil’ in various publishing houses in Battle Creek.

He had a public education, working his way through the public schools of Battle Creek, then attending Russell T. Trall’s Hygeio-Therapeutic College for five months, then Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University), and finally receiving a M.D. degree from the New York University Medical College at Bellevue Hospital – where Kellogg graduated at the age of 23 in 1875. Some credit the beginning of biomedicine to Kellogg, based on his graduation thesis What Is Disease? – which reflected the natural hygiene beliefs of his mentor, Russell Trall.

He would continue his education by studying in Europe at various times between 1883 and 1911. His movement into the medical profession was promoted and provided for by two people he had worked for as a teenager: James and Ellen White, two of the founding members of the Seventh day Adventist church. As a physician, Kellogg would become an advocate of the views of the Adventist Church, especially those considering the dietary approach to healthy living.

He would start editing the Adventist’s Health Reformer newsletter in 1872, and after graduation from medical school he began working at the Adventist’s Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek. He was twenty-four years old when he became the superintendent of it in 1876, and would rename it the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1878, designing it as a place where people could learn how to stay well. Eventually the ‘Sans’ would become a center for the rich and famous to visit. He also renamed the Health Reformer, which became the Good Health magazine.

He married Ella Eaton of Alfred Center, New York, on February 22, 1879. While the couple was childless, they made a goal of providing funds for the education of deserving children, and would virtually raise about forty children in their fifty-room home before Ella died in 1920. Over the years the Kellogg’s would adopt seven of the children.

At ‘Sans’ Kellogg would advocate a health program consisting mainly of a gain-based vegetarian diet. He also advocated things that we hear about today: diet, exercise, fresh air, sunshine, good posture, and dress, along with hydrotherapy. He was an early holistic doctor – practicing a plan for wellness in a time when antibiotics were largely unheard of. He took an early stand against caffeine, meat, alcohol, and tobacco. Some of his ideas can be found in the forward to a booklet titled “The Simple Life In A Nutshell”:

“Biologic living means health, comfort, efficiency, long life.

It means good digestion, sound sleep, a clear head, a placid mind, content and joy to be alive.

Live out of doors. Do your work under the trees instead of behind doors and opaque walls. Dig in the garden, explore the woods and hills. Follow the brooks, watch the squirrels in their gambols and learn the songs of the birds.

Fix up a sleeping porch or balcony and so take an outing all night long and every night, and don't move inside when frost comes. Outdoor sleeping is the best life-preserver known.

And live on the "fat of the land." Forget breakfast foods and culinary delicacies. Abjure flesh pots and "sea food." Find your whole bill of fare in the garden,—peaches, apples, luscious grapes, plums and pears, lettuce, green corn, celery, greens, tomatoes, melons, nuts, and all the rest of the luxuries which Mother Earth supplies. Revel in salads and berries, and green stuffs untouched by fire. These dainty foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century.”

Concerning the importance of grains in a vegetarian diet, Kellogg wrote that natural "foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century."

Kellogg’s medical and philosophical background – as well as a timely accident - created the momentum for him and his brother, Will, to form the Sanitas Food Company in 1897. The invention of flaked grain-based cereal occurred through an accident. The two brothers had invented several foods made from grains. The grains were forced through rollers to make long sheets of dough. One day they were called away while cooking wheat and when they returned, the wheat seemed over cooked. However, they decided to put the wheat through the rollers anyway – and each wheat berry was flattened into a thin flake. They had discovered ‘flaked’ cereals.

The typical breakfast of the wealthy in the late 19th century was eggs and meat (while the poor had porridge, gruel, and other boiled grains), the Kellogg’s would advocate whole grain cereals as the major breakfast diet. They were not the first to produce a dry cereal – that honor goes to Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created the first dry breakfast cereal, which he called Granula, in 1863. But they did bring corn flakes and wheat flakes to the dry breakfast cereal market.

Unfortunately, older John Kellogg treated his less-educated and younger brother Will more as an employee than a partner. That, combined with Will wanting to add sugar to the corn flakes, led to a split between the two brothers. In 1906, Will started his own company, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which eventually became the Kellogg Company, triggering a decades-long feud over the rights to cereal recipes. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.

Kellogg was also an inventor, receiving over thirty patents for his various inventions. These inventions included the electric blanket, the universal dynamometer (for testing the strength of muscles), and the electric light bath – as well as some improved medical instruments for the surgeons to use.

He also was a prodigious author, writing over fifty books concerning health advocacy, as well as numerous magazine articles. He also promoted what he believed in, becoming one of the primary founders in Battle Creek of the American Medical Missionary College and the Battle Creek College. He also organized a School of Home Economics and a School of Physical Education – carrying his beliefs into the classroom.

He continued his practice as a skilled surgeon into his seventies, and often operated with no fee on those who could not afford surgery. He warned that smoking caused cancer – decades before the link was discovered.

While he had been highly involved with the Seventh Day Adventist Church for 2/3rds of his life, the church would expel him in 1907 due to his divergent views on the Bible and his belief in pantheism, the belief that there is a divine presence in all living things. As the twentieth century got underway, he had split from his family, forsaken the use of the Kellogg name on cereal products, and split from his church.

With the coming of the Great Depression, the ‘Sans’ would fall on hard times, and go into receivership, and Kellogg’s Battle Creek Food Company would fall on hard times. Also, many of his more extreme ideas would be increasingly criticized by the public and the press.

Kellogg was on his deathbed when he tried to reconcile with his brother – even writing a letter admitting that he had been wrong in his earlier treatment of Will, and in fighting Will in court for the cereal rights. However, his secretary - entrusted to mail the letter - never did, and John Kellogg died without being reconciled with his brother.

After suffering through three days of pneumonia, John Harvey Kellogg died on December 14, 1943, at the age of 91. His wife, Ella, had passed away in 1920. They are buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery, Battle Creek, Michigan.

William Shurtleff would write perhaps the best overall description of John Harvey Kellogg:

"Kellogg was a dynamo of human energy, a personification of the work ethic, who needed only 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, went cycling or jogging every morning, dictated 25 to 50 letters a day, adopted and reared 42 children, wrote nearly 50 books, edited a major magazine, performed more than 22,000 operations, gave virtually all of his money to charitable organizations, loved human service, generally accomplished the work of ten active people, and lived in good health to age 91."

WEB RESOURCES:

Faqs.org
Find A Grave
Natural Health Perspective
New York Times obituary
NNDB
Wikipedia


PHOTO SOURCES:

Woodcut print of John Kellogg, Wikipedia
Photo portrait of John Kellogg, Natural Health Perspective
1910 Corn Flakes Advertisement, Wikipedia
Picture of Kellogg in the early 20th century, NNDB
Kellogg family gravestone, Find A Grave picture by Scott Michaels
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August 10: Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War

His early work career involved one failure after another, yet he persevered and became known as the financier of the American Civil War – and later the collapse of his company would cause the Panic of 1873.

Jay Cooke was born on August 10, 1821, in the then-frontier town of Sandusky, located in North-Central Ohio on the coast of Lake Erie. Eleutheros Cooke, his father, was a pioneer Ohio lawyer as well as a representing Ohio in Congress from 1831-1833 as a member of the Whig Party. He also was one of the early railroad investors, and was a real estate speculator. The new child was named after John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

It seemed as though Cooke was predestined for the world of business and finance. His early school experience was at the local schools in Sandusky, and at the age of fourteen he became a clerk in a local store. A year later he moved to take a position in a wholesale business in St. Louis, Missouri. The following year he lost his job due to the Panic of 1837 and would return to Ohio – settling in

At the age of fourteen, Cooke became a clerk in a local store. When he was fifteen, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and took a position in a wholesale business. He lost his job the following year due to the Panic of 1837 when he was sixteen, and returned to Ohio, where he settled in Bloomingville, just outside of Sandusky.

Cooke decided that his future lay in the East, and he moved to Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1838. He began working with a packet company, becoming involved with shipping and receiving goods on steamboats. The company failed with the year, and Cook became a bookkeeper in a local hotel. In 1839, the E.W. Clark & Company – which was a brokerage and banking company (and one of the largest private banking firms in the nation) – hired Cooke. He found his niche, quickly advancing through the ranks of the company and becoming a partner by 1842. The company was a successful one, providing financing for the newest boom in transportation – the railroads – as well as arranging to loan the federal government money to finance the Mexican War. By the time Cooke was thirty he was also a partner in Calrk & Company’s New York and St. Louis branches.

The Panic of 1857 would cause Clark & Company to suffer, but Cook – through a finely developed business acumen and wise management of his investments - emerged from that Panic a wealthy man. He retired from the firm in 1858, and would spend his time reorganizing abandoned railways and canals in Pennsylvania, putting them back in operation.

The Civil War was beginning to brew when the private banking house of Jay Cooke & Company opened in Philadelphia on January 1, 1861. It quickly established itself as an economic force to be reckoned with when it quickly floated a war loan of three million dollars for the state of Pennsylvania. The nations leaders, facing what they knew would become a costly civil war, quickly approached Cooke. Union Secretary of State Salmon P. Chase met with Cook in the early months of the war to discuss loans. Cooke quickly arranged loans from the leading bankers in the Northern states, and his own firm was extremely successful in distributing Union Treasury notes. Cooke was rewarded for his efforts by being engaged as a special agent for the sale of $500,000,000 of “five-twenty” government bonds that were authorized for sale in February 1862.

Cooke was so successful at arranging the sale of these bonds – which had not done well before Cooke came on the scene – that he actually sold eleven million dollars more than he was authorized. The Congress quickly sanctioned the sales. Thanks to Cooke’s efforts on this and other loan drives, Union soldiers were supplied and paid regularly.

As the Civil War moved toward its conclusion, Cooke became interested in the development of the American Northwest. In 1870 Cooke & Company financed the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, hoping to create a transportation route that would bring the raw materials and produce from the West to Duluth, Minnesota – then shipped through the Great Lakes to markets in Europe. Unfortunately, the project was not as successful as Cooke had hoped. Competition with the Union Pacific drove shipping rates down so far that the railroads lost money. Since many investors – including Cooke - speculated on railroad stocks, the market lost faith in railroads. When Cook & Company closed its doors on September 18, 1873, it started the Panic of 1873.

The man who had financed the Union in the Civil War soon found his company foundering. The company did collapse, but thanks to investments in a silver mine in Utah, Cooke was able to pay off all of his creditors and regain his wealth by 1880.

Cooke died at the age of 83 on February 8, 1905, and is buried in the St. Paul's Episcopal Church Cemetery, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Cooke was noted for his piety and as an Episcopalian regularly gave a tenth of his income for religious and charitable purposes. He overcame difficulties throughout his life, including bankruptcy, in order to become one of the noted financiers of the day.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

Our local library has no biography on Jay Cooke

WEB RESOURCES:

1911 Encyclopedia
Biography from Answers
Find A Grave
Ohio History Central
Ohio State University
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Portrait, Tax History Museum
02. Portrait as a young man, Ohio State University, Cooke Collection
03. Portrait of Jay Cooke, Ohio State University, Cooke Collection
04. Cooke tomb, Find A Grave by Thomas Fisher
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June 15: "...I found I could do anything I turned my hand to..."

Do you know who this is?
-He is known as “Chicago’s Founder”.
-He successfully managed a lumber mill when he was sixteen.
-He was Chicago’s first mayor.

William Butler Ogden was born in the village of Walton, located in western New York, on June 15, 1805, to a pioneer family that had migrated from New Jersey. He attended the country schools that dotted the counties of the early 19th century, and had plans on becoming a lawyer. Those plans, however, where put aside when his father became ill and Ogden, at the age of sixteen, took over his family’s property and logging interests. His father soon died, but Ogden proved that he was a successful businessman, and would prosper. He later wrote:

"I was born close to a sawmill, was cradled in a sugar trough, christened in a mill pond, early left an orphan, graduated from a log schoolhouse and, at 14, found I could do anything I turned my hand to and that nothing was impossible..."

He would briefly attend law school, but business interests overrode educational interests. He assisted his brother-in-law, Charles Butler, in a number of business ventures. While business interests was his forte’, Ogden briefly entered the political arena in 1834, when he was elected to the New York State legislature, where he voted to finance the Erie Railroad - promoting business and commercial interests.

Ogden travelled west to the village of Chicago in 1835 on behalf of his brother-in-law’s business interests. Butler had invested $100,000 in land in and around Chicago in anticipation of profits to be gained during a land rush that was occurring in the Midwest. Ogden investigated, and – standing ankle-deep in mud - was not impressed with the purchase, writing to Butler that he had been “guilty of the grossest folly. There is no such value in the land and won't be for a generation." Ogden then used his business acumen to drain the land, and then set up streets and lots. He would sell of a third of the property to regain Butler’s investment, in the process placing a higher value on his opinion of the town. He moved to set up a permanent home in Chicago in 1836.

Seeing the future for Chicago, Ogden became busy as a businessman in the budding community. He became well known as an industrious visionary, and many identified him with growth because of a variety of business enterprises created by him around Chicago. His focus was on speculative investments in real estate, but he always kept transportation in his mind. He used his contacts in New York to establish a link between the East and the West that benefited Chicago. When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, Ogden was elected as its first mayor and served a two-year term. Ogden, running as a Democrat, would defeat the Whig candidate, John Kinzie. After his term was over, he would become an alderman for the city. In his political positions he taxed the citizens for streets, sidewalks, and bridges. When the building projects outran the funds available from taxes, Ogden and his land speculation partners in New York would pay for the improvements from their own pockets.

The primary means of mass transportation in the early 19th century was the development of the railroad, and Ogden was one of the originators of a movement that led to the building of the Chicago and Galena Railroad - the city's first. It would be Ogden's money and financial promises that financed the construction of the railroad as it stretched westward toward Elgin, Illinois. He would become president of the railroad in 1847.

He also provided funds and support for the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and served on the Chicago Board of Sewage, and designed the first drawbridge over the Chicago River. He was a major investor in the Chicago Canal and Dock Company, and at one point hired a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to help him gain clear title to property bordering the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

Over time, Ogden became one of Chicago's wealthiest citizens. When his secretary told him he was worth more than a million dollars, Ogden exclaimed: "By God.... that's a lot of money!" Then he proceeded to make more money by developing land that he owned, or having city projects buy that land.

He was involved, however, not only in the politics and the business interests of the growing city, but also influenced the various aspects of living in a growing city by being involved in the development of Chicago's charities, it's cultural centers, and it's educational institutions, including funding the first medical center in the city.

In 1862 the visionary Ogden was picked as the first president of the Union Pacific Railroad. His vision of a transcontinental railroad linking the two oceans bordering the United States was close to being a reality. At the age of fifty-seven Ogden took on the raising of funds, using political connections to secure right-of-way, and personal supervision of the laying of track to complete this huge project. He also made Chicago the hub of east-west rail traffic.

The Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed most of his possessions - and on the same day (October 8th), a lumber mill he owned in Wisconsin burned down. The lumber mill was a part of a huge lumber empire that Ogden had been building in Wisconsin.

Ogden would move back to New York after the fire, and would marry late in his life. He was sixty-nine years old when he married Marinna Arnot of Elmira, New York, on February 9, 1875, and would have two sons – John and Hiram. Ogden would die on August 3, 1877, and was buried in Woodland Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

Ogden altered the American Midwest in a tremendous way. His vision of what could be done in the swampland that made up early Chicago created an industrial center and transportation hub that served a growing nation.

A biography of Ogden will be released this fall. The Railroad Tycoon Who Built Chicago, by Jack Harpster, will be released in September 2009.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

There are no biographies of William Ogden available at our local library at this time.

WEB RESOURCES:

Encyclopedia of Chicago
Famous Americans
Genealogy Trails
Ogden books
PBS
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Portrait of William Ogden: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-37333)
02. Map of 1835 Chicago: Encyclopedia of Chicago
03. Galena & Chicago Union Railroad Depot: Chicago Historical Society

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Feb. 17: “Satisfaction or your money back”

Do you know who this is?
-Was the originator of mail-order sales in the United States
-His first business inventory was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire
-Had to quit school at the age of 14

The mail-order business today is the route that many people prefer in finding products, value, and providing an ease of effort that is often not available in regular shopping expeditions to the stores. The concept of a mail-order business is a little over a hundred years old, with most people attributing its origins to Sears and Robuck. However, in reality the origins of the mail-order business lie in the mind and hands of Aaron Montgomery Ward.

Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1844, in Chatham, New Jersey. When he was about nine years old his father, Sylvester Ward, moved the Ward family to Niles, Michigan. Aaron attended public schools. The Ward family was large, and were not wealthy, so at the age of fourteen he was taken out of school and apprenticed to a barrel making shop, both to learn a trade and to provide financial assistance for his family. He first earned 25 cents per day at a cutting machine in a barrel stave factory, and then stacking brick in a kiln at 30 cents a day. Eventually he would leave the mechanic’s work, seeking employment that provided more of a challenge for his active mind and greater financial reward.

He moved to St. Joseph, Michigan, finding employment as a salesman – first in a shoe store and later in a general country store, where he earned six dollars per month plus board – a sizable salary for the era. He would remain at the store for three years, rising to head clerk and then general manager. When he left the store his salary was one hundred dollars a month plus board. Why did Montgomery leave his lucrative position? He was offered a better job at a competing store, where he worked for another two years. It was during these five years that he learned the complex art of successful retailing.

In 1865 Montgomery moved to Chicago, Illinois, going to work for Case and Sobin, a lamp house. He would soon move to a new job, working for the leading dry-goods store in the city: Field Palmer & Leiter, the forerunner of Marshall Field & Co. He would work there for two years, then moved to another dry goods business, Wills, Greg & Co. Here he made numerous train trips to southern communities, visiting crossroads stores, listening to the complaints of country store proprietors and their rural customers.

It was during this time that he conceived a new merchandising technique: direct mail sales to rural residents. It was a time when rural consumers longed for the comforts of the city, yet all too often were victimized by monopolists and overcharged by the costs of many middlemen required to bring manufactured products to the countryside. The quality of merchandise also was suspect and the hapless farmer had no recourse in a caveat emptor economy. Montgomery shaped a plan to buy goods at low cost for cash. By eliminating intermediaries, with their markups and commissions, and drastically cutting selling costs, he could sell goods to people, however remote, at appealing prices. He then invited them to send their orders by mail and delivered the purchases to their nearest railroad station. The only thing he lacked was capital.

None of Montgomery’s friends or associates would join him in his revolutionary idea at first. By 1871 he had been nearly ready to start business when his entire stock of supplies was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire in October, 1871. Finally, in August 1872, Montgomery and two fellow employees, with an initial capital of $1,600, began selling merchandise by mail from a cramped office and shipping room at the corner of North Clark Street and Kidzie Street, Chicago. Surrounded in their office by hoop skirts, lace curtains, red flannel, and more, Montgomery sent out his first catalog – a one-page list of 162 items. The catalog was sent to farmers’ cooperatives throughout the rural Midwest. In 1873 – after the first year of business, his two employee-partners left the organization, to be replaced by his future brother-in-law, Richard Thorne. By 1874 his price list had grown to 32 pages and was bound into a catalog. Soon his catalogs would be filled with color illustrations, woodcuts, and drawings to better show the products. By 1875 the Montgomery Ward & Company coined the phrase, “Satisfaction or your money back.” By 1883 the catalog had grown to 240 pages with approximately ten thousand items. By 1895 the catalog was over 600 pages, containing six kinds of bicycle bells (from .30 to $1.10); a piano ($200); a buggy ($60). Other offerings to rural America included sewing machines, iron beds, bathtubs, book titles, chairs, watches, pages of jewelry, Colt six-shooters, and commodes. The man or woman interested in matrimony could by a solid-gold eighteen-karat wedding band for five dollars. When a new catalog was received, the well thumbed through previous year’s catalog was relegated to the privy out in back of the house.

It was a case of the right idea at the right time. Montgomery offered the rural farmers and small townspeople a wide variety of merchandise and could keep his prices low by eliminating the middleman. The homesteaders pushing west took the catalog with them, providing him with an expanding geographic base of customers.

His catalog was copied by other entrepreneurs, the most successful being Sears and Roebuck, who mailed their first catalog in 1896.

Aaron Montgomery Ward died on December 7, 1913, at the age of 69 and is buried in Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum, Chicago, Illinois.

His legacy? In 1946 the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York, included a Montgomery Ward catalog on its list of the 100 American books that had most affected American life, noting "no idea ever mushroomed so far from so small a beginning, or had so profound an influence on the economics of a continent, as the concept, original to America, of direct selling by mail, for cash." CNN Money report had, perhaps, the best statement about the contributions of Montgomery: “Legacy: Ward founded the world's first mail-order business, Montgomery Ward Co., in 1872. Countless other catalog-based companies have followed in his footsteps, including information-age retailers like Amazon.com.”

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
No biographies are available at our local library.

WEB RESOURCES:
Book Rags
Engines of our Ingenuity
Morning Call
NIU
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCE:
Portrait: Wikipedia Commons
Catalog Cover: University of Delaware

Mrs. Potts Irons: White River Valley

Signature: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography