The distances between one habitation and another were often considerable, and people traveling late in the day were frequently frozen to death in extreme weather, especially in intoxicated conditions. Indeed there were more deaths from freezing than from any other fatality. Winters would kill mostly transient dwellers such as discharged soldiers, sailors, and farmhands out of work for the winter.
The grocery stores we know today were called "General Stores" back then. General Stores
Proof: Ordinances of the Town of Chicago were incorporated on August 12, 1833.
The saloon in Chicago had its origin in two places. The oldest was the inn or tavern, a combination kitchen, hotel, and drinking establishment. Much of the city's early social life revolved around Wolf Point on the Chicago River. Such spots included James Kinzie's (John Kinzie's son) Green Tree Tavern. Mark Beaubien opened the Eagle Exchange Tavern in a log cabin on the south bank of the Chicago River in 1829, then added a frame addition to the Eagle in 1831. Beaubien also opened the Sauganash Hotel, Chicago's first hotel, serving food and drink.
The second type of drinking establishment evolved from grocers and provisioners who began to sell hard liquor in wholesale quantities. At first, their sample rooms were places where customers could taste-test the stock; long afterward, "sample room" became another name for a saloon. By the late 1850s, the term saloon had begun to appear in directories and was commonly used as a term for licensed drinking establishments that specialized in beer and liquor sales by the glass, with food and lodging as secondary concerns in some places. Stops such as Stacey's Tavern in present-day Glen Ellyn or the Pre-Emption House in Naperville were popular among farmers journeying to the city.
The answer lay in adapting the British "Tied-House" control system. Brewers purchased hundreds of storefronts, especially in highly desired corner locations. The brewers rented to prospective saloonkeepers and all the furnishings, including recreational equipment such as billiard tables and bowling alleys. Schlitz and a few others built elaborate saloons, examples of which still survive in Chicago today. The Chicago City Council also contributed to the brewery domination by increasing the saloon license from $50 to $500 between 1883 and 1885 to pay for an expanded police force supposedly made necessary by the increasing barroom brawls. Relatively few independent proprietors could afford to pay such amounts.
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| An 1880s Grocer's Newspaper Ad. |
Today's stores offer a great variety of merchandise for the convenience of their customers, but in the 1800s, merchants simply sold the items they could obtain and resell. These general stores, mercantile or emporiums, served rural populations of small towns and villages and the farmers and ranchers in the surrounding areas. They offered a place where people could find food and necessities that would have otherwise been difficult to obtain.
During the first part of the 19th ceCenturythese, stores stocked necessities, but as the economy prospered after the Civil War, more and more luxury items found their way onto the shelves. The storekeepers purchased merchandise from salesmen representing large wholesale houses and manufacturers in larger cities and seaside ports.
At first, only locally produced perishable goods were sold in general stores. With the expansion of the railroads, the advent of mass production, and advances in technology, such as the refrigerated boxcar, the local shopkeeper could receive and sell goods from countries far away and southern and western America states.
What was a general store like in the 19th Century?
Indeed, not anything approaching the modern grocery or department store. Most stores had at least one large display window, but inside, they were still dark and gloomy — and, depending on their geographical location, probably damp and humid to boot. Most were crowded with shelving along every wall. The floors were also crammed with boxes, barrels, crates, and tables holding goods.
Most of the items found in a general store would be familiar to us today. Food and consumables included coffee beans, spices, baking powder, oatmeal, flour, sugar, tropical fruit, hard candy, eggs, milk, butter, fruit and vegetables, honey and molasses, crackers, cheese, syrup and dried beans, cigars, and tobacco.
The apothecary section of the store, as in a modern grocery or department store, was well represented with patent-specific medicines, remedies, soaps, toiletries, and elixirs. The major difference between the medicine then and now is that it's illegal to sell snake oil! Most patent remedies of the era were alcohol-based, which explained their popularity in many cases.
The dry goods section of the store included bolts of cloth, pins and needles, thread, ribbon, silk, buttons, collars, undergarments, suspenders, dungarees, hats, and shoes. Essential items such as rifles, pistols, ammunition, lanterns, lamps, rope, crockery, pots and pans, cooking utensils and dishes, farm and milking equipment parts, and sometimes even coffins could be found inside a general mercantile!
The average store would have been considered none too clean by modern standards. The roads outside were unpaved and unwashed; the dirt tracked in by customers would have included animal waste (and possibly human if someone had emptied their chamber pot into the street). The cast-iron stove heating the store during cold weather produced soot that settled over much of the merchandise. And it was not unheard of to discover rodents foraging about inside the store.
When money was scarce, the shopkeeper might extend credit to a regular customer or accept payment in kind (bartering for meat, eggs, and/or crops).
Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
