History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 69

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358

USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men > Part 69

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Shortly after that date Mr. Barksdale retired to engage in the banking business, and the firm-name was changed to that of Crow, McCrcery & Co. P. R. McCreery died in November, 1861, and George D. Appleton retired in the succeeding year. The members of the firm then were Wayman Crow, Wm. H. Hargadine, Hugh McKittrick, David D. Walker, and Francis Ely.

In 1871 the firm removed to the new Chouteau buildings, 523 North Main Street (near Washington Avenue), and occupied a handsome warehouse twenty- eight feet front by one hundred and forty feet deep, employing four stories for the storage of goods. The building was provided with all the modern appliances for transacting business with facility, including two elevators, one for the passage of customers from floor to floor, and the other for raising and lowering goods.

A newspaper, in its notice of the removal, remarked at the time, " The contrast between the small building on Water and Oak Streets, where the firm first began business, and the palatial house now occupied by them is scarcely less than that between the St. Louis of 1835 and the St. Louis of 1871, and not more marked than the changes that have been made in the mode and extent of business, the character of and terms upon which sales are made, and the facilities for handling and time of transit of goods from the for- eign and domestic looms to the warehouse here and their distribution to interior merchants. The sales of one hundred thousand dollars per annum have in- creased to two million dollars, while credits have shrunk from six months to thirty and sixty days, with collections as prompt now as they then were dilatory. The country merchants visited the city once in six months, and the business of the year was crowded into two periods of thirty days each, and dullness inter- vened for four or five months, while now each day brings its quota of purchasers, and upon any day in the winter as much business is donc, relatively to the trade of the year, as was then transacted in the three months of December, January, and February. Then the population of the Mississippi valley was confined to a narrow belt skirting the river and its tributaries, and the whistle of the locomotive was an unknown sound. Now, with increased population in all the great States of the valley, and with new regions daily being opened up to our commerce, Mr. Crow secms in his energy and enterprise to emulate his youth and still strive to place St. Louis in the front rank of com- mercial cities."

The present firm, under the style of Crow, Harga- dine & Co., is composed of Wayman Crow, William

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HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

A. Hargadine, Hugh McKittrick, and Edward J. Glasgow, Jr. The warehouse, a handsome and im- posing structure, is situated at the southeast corner of Eighth Street and Washington Avenue.

The great firm of Dodd, Brown & Co. was estab- lished in January, 1866, by Samuel M. Dodd and James G. Brown, who located on the corner of Main and Locust Streets, in a four-story building twenty- five feet by one hundred and twenty feet, and filled it with what was then considered a very large stock. Their sales during the first year aggregated one mil- jion two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, giving

who commenced the dry-goods business at No. 418 Franklin Avenue, with a cash capital of two thou- sand three hundred dollars. From this small begin- ning they have gradually built up one of the largest dry-goods houses in the country, and having made no less than six large additions to the original building, now occupy an imposing structure at the southeast corner of Fifth Street and Franklin Avenue.

In addition to the above there are a large number of flourishing dry-goods firms in St. Louis, and the trade is of vast proportions. The amount of capital employed in the business was estimated by Joseph

DODD. BROWN & GO. 590

DODD. BROWN& CO.

DODD, BROWN & CO., Corner Fifth and St. Charles Streets.

them a front rank in the trade. The firm continued business at the original store until 1869, when it re- moved to 217 North Main Street. In 1871 it erected the present warehouse at the northeast corner of Fifth and St. Charles Streets. It is an immense building, five stories in height with a basement, covering about sixty thousand square feet, and provided with all the conveniences necessary to facilitate the vast business of the firm. The house as at present constituted is composed of Samuel M. and Marcus D. Dodd, James G. Brown, and Hamilton Daughaday.

The firm of D. Crawford & Co. was established in 1866 by Dugald Crawford and Alexander Russell,

Franklin, of the William Barr Dry-Goods Company, in 1880, at $10,000,000, and the amount of business annually at $35,000,000. From 1870 to 1880 the trade had doubled in the aggregate.

In 1881 twelve exclusively wholesale and importing houses were engaged in the trade, besides seven dry- goods commission houses and one wholesale and retail house, making a total of twenty houses engaged in wholesaling dry-goods. The business transacted during the year amounted in value to over $28,000,000. In addition to the wholesale houses there were 207 retail establishments in St. Louis.

Closely allied with the dry-goods trade are the

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TRADE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES.

· wholesale fancy goods and notions and the wholesale millinery and straw goods trades. In the fancy goods and notions trade twenty-four wholesale houses were engaged in 1881, their business annually amounting to about $8,000,000. The number of wholesale and retail houses engaged in the same trade, in addition to the twenty-four houses referred to, was 183. In the wholesale millinery and straw goods business eleven large concerns were engaged, with a business amounting to more than three million dollars per annum, besides which there were eighty-eight mil- linery firms.

The extensive carpet and curtain house of John Kennard & Sons, long eminent in enterprise and busi- ness standing, is the oldest house in the special line of goods dealt in in the whole West, and the largest house in its trade west of New York. It has occu- pied the same locality for twenty-seven years, during which time its business connections and volume of trade have steadily and continually increased, and its reputation for taste and judgment, like its commercial standing and mercantile repute, has never ceased to rise higher and higher.

The founder of this house, John Kennard, even before he came to St. Louis, had made himself known both in the East and the West as one of the most energetic and enterprising men of business of his day. His knowledge of goods and of the trade was remarkably extensive ; his reputation in the East as a buyer was only excelled by his standing in the West as a salesman and judge of the market. He had the closest and most intimate familiarity with the pro- cesses of manufacture and the tendencies and drift of custom ; one glance at a fabric enabled him to dis- cover at once how and of what it was made, and what were its prospects to please the taste or satisfy the notions of customers.

John Kennard was a Marylander by birth, and de- scended of ancient and honorable stock, English in ancestry, on both the male and female sides of the house. His father, John Kennard, was the grandson of the Kennard (John also) who immigrated from England in the early part of the eighteenth century. John Kennard of the existing firm is the fifth John Kennard, son of John, the fifth in direct line from the settler in " Old Kent." John Kennard the first patented an estate of considerable proportions in Kent County, Md., the property being about Worton. Some of his descendants still hold land in that neigh- borhood and about Rock Hall. John the second, un- like several other of his father's children, who settled elsewhere in the peninsula of Maryland and Delaware (one went to Philadelphia, another to South Carolina

and made a fortune), remained at the paternal home- stead, his by right of birth as the oldest born, and here his son, John the third, was born March 28, 1778. John, the third, when he grew up left the home place and settled in Talbot County, where, Jan. 15, 1807, he married Mary Spencer. John Kennard the third was a man of remarkable and stately presence, and his manners had something of the grand air. He lived in different parts of Mary- land and the West, dying eventually in Lexington, Ky., on Jan. 8, 1840. His wife, Mary Spencer, who survived to the age of eighty-seven years, a hale and hearty nonagenarian, was a daughter of Hon. Perry Spencer, one of the most considerable men of his day and section, a ship-builder of prominence when the ship-yards of the Chesapeake were famous all over the world, a leading politician and representative, and three times in immediate succession (1800-8) elector for his State on the Presidential ticket. His home- stead, " Spencer Hall," on Miles River, had been con- tinuously in the family from the arrival of the founder of the family, James Spencer, in 1670.

John Kennard the fourth, the subject of this sketch, son of John the third and Mary Spencer, was born in the town of Easton, Talbot Co., Md., Aug. 14, 1809. His parents had other children,-Perry S. Kennard, of St. Louis ; Robert O., of Vicksburg ; Mary, married to Dr. Newman, of St. Louis; and Elizabeth, wife of Whittington King, of Lexington, Ky

A few years after the birth of John Kennard fourth his parents removed to Baltimore and took up their residence in that city. . Mr. Kennard, Sr., had nearly impoverished himself by undertaking the guardian- ship of his father's minor children and acting the part of a father to them, and he was consequently not able to give his son John any great educational advantages. Indeed, he received but little schooling, and it was only by giving the same assiduous attention to books, reading, and study which he applied to business that the young man was able to repair the defects of so meagre an academic training as had been at his com- mand. He was still only a lad when he entered the wholesale dry-goods house of Thomas Mummey (after- wards Mummey & Meredith, Mummey, Meredith & Spencer, and Meredith & Spencer), one of the largest establishments in Baltimore, and having control espe- cially of an extensive Western and Southern trade.

Here Mr. Kennard was able to learn the rudiments of commerce and merchandise under exceptionally favorable auspices, and he made such good use of his opportunities that he speedily became known as one of the best young business men in the city, and in a

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HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

few years had such confidence in his own energy and capacity as to go into business for himself. In 1832 the Asiatie eholera desolated Baltimore, and in a few days Mr. Mummey, his wife, his brother and his wife were all borne to the grave, none of them surviving more than a few hours' illness. It was in this first encounter with the dreaded pestilence in its most fatal form (for then no one knew anything about the dis- ease and its treatment) that Mr. Kennard acquired that familiar knowledge of nursing in epidemies and of the way to combat diseases of the kind which he afterwards put to such exemplary and heroie use during the visits of the cholera plague to Lexington and St. Louis. In the former eity his services in these seasons of affliction will not soon be forgotten, though most of the generation in which they were rendered has already passed away. In 1833, Wednes- day evening, August 21st, by Rev. Eli Henkle, pastor of St. John's Methodist Protestant Church, Baltimore, Mr. Kennard was married to Rebecca Owings Mum- mey, daughter of his former employer, lately deccased.

Mrs. Kennard's family was good old Maryland stock all round. There are no better people in aneient Baltimore County than those who bear the names of Coekey, Deye, and Owings. Thomas Mummey's grandfather was Joshua, son of Richard Owings, an extensive owner of mill-seats; his grand- mother was Mary Coekey, daughter of John and Eliza Cockey. The names of Cockey, Deye, Owings, and their kinsfolk the Gists are familiar enough all through the West, where they were pioneers ; but before that they were pioneers also in Maryland. Joshua Owings was one of the members of the first vestry of the first Episcopal Church in Maryland west of Baltimore, and in his house (it is still standing, though greatly altered) the first Methodist converts in Maryland assembled, and Asbury preached his first sermons. Mary Coekey (Owings) was born Dec. 10, 1716, and died Feb. 6, 1768, the mother of ten children. One of these children, Mareella, born July 5, 1748, married Thomas Worthington, and lived to be ninety-six years old. Anotlier, Re- beeca, born Jan. 27, 1751, was married to Samuel Mummey, and died Dee. 24, 1806.

Samuel Mummey (it has been conjectured that the name was originally Munnings, but it is undoubtedly the same name now so familiar in Washington County, Md., as Mumma, and the original of which, Mumme, meaning " masker," " mummer," is of very frequent occurrence in and around Bremen) was one of three brothers who eame when very young from Germany and settled in Baltimore County,-trades- men, with no fortune but their eraft and their indus-

try. The other two brothers were John and Chris -. topher. John married Margaretta Beam, one of a milling family, and Christopher, after doing service in the army of Washington during the Revolution, went .West and settled in Kentucky.

Samuel Mummey and Rebecca, his wife, were the parents of six children, of whom Thomas, the cldest, was born Oet. 26, 1774, in Baltimore County. He had but seant schooling, but was a well-read man before he died. He came to Baltimore very early to seek his fortunc, his estate at that time consisting chiefly of a new suit of elothes and seven or eight silver dollars, the products of the sale of the skins of rabbits caught in his traps during the winter. Ten years later he was in business for himself, and pushing his way toward that fortune with a most untiring energy. His associates on Market Street habitually ealled him par excellence "the minute- man." On July 13, 1797, Thomas Mummey was married to Catharinc Fishburne, of Frederiek County, Md., born May 14, 1778, the daughter of Philip Fishburne and Elizabeth, his wife. Philip Fish- burne was English by birth, a man of studious turn, with a bent for astronomy. He had been educated in Germany with the intention of becoming a clergy- man. This plan had been abandoned and emigration to America substituted for it; but the studious man still retained his piety and his fondness for the ven- erable old tomes, vellum-bound quartos, and pig-skin folios which were in his library. He was a member of the Committee of Safety in Frederick County during the Revolutionary war, and was greatly es- tcemcd.

Thomas and Catharine Mummey had thirteen ehil- dren, of whom Rebecca, the wife of John Kennard, was the eighth. " Sister" Mummey, as all her eon- temporaries used to eall her, was in every way a most beautiful character, lovely in her person, flawless in her soul, and brilliant of mind,-a woman whom all looked up to, and to whom leadership was natural. Sister Mummey's house was the resort of the whole Methodist Conference ; Sister Mummey's " elass" and praycr-meeting and missionary society were the most esteemed of all their kind in the community. The " sainted woman" was what the Catholic ladies and priests who encountered her in her errands of charity and of consolation used to call her. Sister Mummey had energy to match her zeal and decision to balance the sweet serenity of her character. She led the secession in 1829 out of which the Methodist Protestant Church grew, and once, when her husband's business became involved through indorsing for others, she went into business herself, and not only supported

Bohu Termand

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHINOIS.

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TRADE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES.

the family, but always had a thousand dollars or so to lend her husband to take up a note maturing at an ill time. As for Thomas Mummey, the minutc-man, it is enough to say that he was worthy to be husband of this Sister Catharine, the sainted woman. He lost two or three fortunes by the default of those whom he helped in business, yet when he dicd in 1832 each of his children got a clean little fortune out of his estate. He was a man of affairs, helpful and public- spirited ; was a defender of Baltimore at the battle of North Point, member of the City Council, director in the State Penitentiary, and prominent in fire compa- nies, insurance companies, and banks.

Not long after his marriage with Rebecca Mummey, John Kennard went to the West in search of a busi- ness location. He had determined to cross the Alle- ghenies into the West and plant himself at some place where he might grow up with the country. . He landed at St. Louis the day of the dedication of the Cathedral, and visited Cincinnati and other places, but without coming to a decision. After an experiment with Madi- son, Ind., Mr. Kennard at length established himself in the " Athens of the West," Lexington, Ky., the heart and pride of the Blue Grass region. Here John and his father went into the dry-goods business, but the old gentleman only lived to 1840, and his son established other business connections. It was a bad time for business in the West, after the terrible panie, collapse, and depression of 1837, when that section, the centre of the gigantic land speculations, suffered most, beeausc all values were locked up in land, and sunk together in the common vortex of one universal depreciation. Mr. Kennard had a young and growing family, and therc were a good many people besides, more or less help- less themselves, whom it was the instinctive need of his heart, rather than the demand of reason or prac- tical judgment, to help on and prop up somehow, though he made himself their staff. But he had the energy, the vitality, the industry of a dozen men. Nothing could keep such a man down. He could not fetter himself so tightly that his own forees were unable to break the bonds. And he had much to give away, because he was so simple in his habits, knowing noth- ing beyond the pale of his church, his family, and his business. Not many years before his death he told the writer of this that he could not recolleet that in all his life he had spent five dollars altogether upon himself. A more unselfish man never lived, nor a better and more devoted husband and father, nor a more consistent, humble-minded Christian, nor a better man of business.

In business Mr. Kennard conjoined to a consum- mate taet and a delicate and perfectly educated taste

a fiery energy in action, the closest scrutiny and super- vision in management, and a knowledge and intimate familiarity with all the details which could not be sur- passed. He knew every part of every department himself, and looked after it himself. His quiekness and dispatch werc almost marvelous, and in every case they rested upon a perfect and thorough ac- quaintance with his subject in all its bearings.

After Mr. Kennard had established himself at last in the carpet trade in Lexington, had taken his sons in with him, and thoroughly grasped the business and all its possibilities, he found that the field in Lexing- ton was too small for such a trade as he sought for J. Kennard & Sons. The town was rich, but it was old, conservative, off the line of travel. The maxi- mum of sales was easy to reach, but it was not easy for one to get above and beyond that ; in fact, it could not be transcended. Mr. Kennard made up his mind. He wanted to build up a large business, which, put in the hands of his sons, trained in his methods and brought up under his eye, might be expanded by them to indefinitely great proportions. He removed to St. Louis, established himself there, on Fourth Street, in the carpet and curtain trade in 1857, and that is the beginning of the present house.

With such a foundation the house might be ex- pected to prosper, and so it did from the very first. Mr. Kennard was always successful in St. Louis; he made money rapidly from the start, and might have accumulated largely. But he had set out in life with the determination never to be worth more than fifty thousand dollars, and when his earnings rose above that self-imposed limit he quietly gave the surplus away.

Mr. Kennard died Nov. 18, 1872, aged sixty-three years, the cause of his death being typhoid pneu- monia. A shaft marks the place of his interinent in Bellefontaine Cemetery. His widow survives him. Mr. and Mrs. Kennard were the parents of eight children. Of these, three are living,-Mary Rebecca, John, and Samuel M., comprising the existing firm of J. Kennard & Sons.

The house and the business are a hundredfold larger in every way than the J. Kennard & Sons of Lexington in 1857, yet it is conducted upon identi- cally the same principles, and owes its success, its prosperity, and its capacity for safe and unchecked expansion to the fact that it has retained the methods and the groundwork of the elder John Kennard. His insight, taet, diserimination, good taste, prompt meth- ods, close serutiny, square and upright dealings, and safe and sound financiering are part of the capital and the stoek in trade of the house to-day. It is not only

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HISTORY OF SAINT LOUIS.

as a reminiscence, but as a symbol also that the firm and the sign remain to-day as originally constituted, John Kennard & Sons. He is still, in spirit, influence, and example, the head of the house he established.

The late William Henry Haggerty was at one time among the largest retail dry-goods merchants of the city. Mr. Haggerty was born in County Cork, Ire- land, Sept. 6, 1829, of parents who were widely known and highly respected. His mother having been left a widow and thrown upon her own resources, engaged in mercantile business, in which she achieved remarkable success. Her sons inherited lier talents for trade, and when William Henry left Ireland for America, being then but eighteen years old, he found employment in a large dry-goods house, successfully conducted by three brothers, in New Orleans.

Young Haggerty spent some five years in that business and then removed to St. Louis, having just two dollars and fifteen cents in his pocket when he landed. He went to the house of Murdoch & Dick- son (yet well remembered), explained his condition and the plan he had formed to go into business, showed the two dollars and fifteen cents, and asked for a little credit. Murdoch scrutinized the young man, and remarking that he " seemed like a nice, honest Irishman," granted the request, and young Haggerty started out with a lot of whips which he peddled about town. He soon returned and paid the little in- debtedness, a matter of but two or three dollars. From this transaction there resulted a friendship that lasted until Mr. Murdoch's death, many years later.

Having saved money enough to buy a horse and wagon, his next venture was to purchase a stock of tea, which he sold by the pound to the French cot- tagers on the Gravois road and other parts of the town far from retail stores. In this also he succeeded, and soon realized a sum sufficient to justify the thought of marriage and of engaging regularly in business.

In 1854 he returned to New Orleans, and was married to Anna M. Boylan, daughter of Commodore Boylan, who was interested in a steamship line from New Orleans to Liverpool.

During the same year he embarked in the retail dry-goods trade, and prospered to such an extent that he ventured to open a more pretentious business in what was then known as the " red store," on Seventh Street, opposite the Centre Market, between Spruce and Poplar Streets. Many of the oldest families in the city were his customers, and he made money rapidly. He was ever on the alert for advantageous bargains, and made a practice of frequenting auction sales of fire and bankrupt stocks, and while he bought boldly, his judgment was seldom at fault, and he soon came

to be regarded as one of the best business men in the city in that particular line.'

In 1862 he disposed of his retail business and en- gaged in the wholesale jobbing trade on Main Street. Then for some years he conducted a wholesale auction house, and finally once more engaged in the jobbing business. In January, 1880, he admitted his son Thomas J. as partner, and placed the business in his charge. He next became a member of the auction firm of Haggerty & Dewes, and finally, having been incapacitated for work by an accident, he merged his jobbing business into a stock company under the cor- porate name of Haggerty & Son Auction Goods Com- pany, in which shape the business was being conducted when he died, March 11, 1882, leaving a handsome fortune to his widow and a family of nine children.

Mr. Haggerty was a zealous member of the Catholic Church, and for sixteen years of St. John's parish. His life was marked by many deeds of unostentatious charity, and he was deeply interested in all the benevo- lent enterprises of the church, especially those in- volving the care of orphans. He was also a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and was one of the five charter members of the Knights of St. Pat- rick. In all these relations he shunned publicity, but his advice was always sought, and generally proved judicious.

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History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 69

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898 Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts Number of Pages: 1358

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358