Groceries in the North and South in the Postbellum Period

After the Civil War, in a time often referenced as the Postbellum period or the Gilded Age, the U. S. states and territories experienced noticeable growth and development along with the usual hardships and trials which follow a war. The changing and expanding grocery business, at the warehouse and local store levels, helped meet one of the most basic needs of human beings. Though all grocers faced identifiable challenges and some failed, many grocery providers in the North and South established new practices, experienced increased business, and contributed to the expanding economic conditions across local and national regions.

Newspaper reporters, grocery owners, jobbers, biographers, and historians all demonstrate the trials, growth, and development in the grocery business over the period. Reports on purchasing patterns, business expansions and closures, lists of available foods and food prices, surrounding conditions, and personal experience all help show the big picture. Samples of various available sources are considered here to provide statistical inferences of what the entire collection of sources would show if available and reviewed.[1] It is a qualitative study based on news reports, personal stories, and secondary analysis.

Many new grocers in the Postbellum period started their businesses with little funds or outside help. Across the nation, North, South, and West, it was possible to rent a building and install a few basic necessities for just a few hundred dollars.[2] Grocers starting with little cash would often stock the shelves with items purchased on credit.[3] This could be an especially risky financial practice for grocers who still used the barter system or who extended credit to their customers.[4] Grocers in the South encountered greater challenges than those in the North due to the lack of capital and of large consumer centers which were available in the North.[5] Also, the South contained many poor, tenant farmers (both black and white),[6] which indicates less buying power.

Whether they were new or established owners of grocery stores, these entrepreneurs of Postbellum America had to overcome several challenges to succeed in their business, to provide food for the people in their area and income for their families. For instance, fires were a frequent problem. Stores in the North and South and warehouses in the North often had fires, sometimes burning everything to the ground.[7]

The measure of the impact on the stores depended on how much product was consumed in the flames and how much insurance the owners carried; these facts were often reported in the newspapers. For example, the loss of stock at Joseph Wooden’s grocery in Baltimore, Maryland was estimated to be between $1,500 and $2,000, all of which was covered by insurance, while the loss for Allen Oliver’s grocery store in Washington, D.C., estimated at $1,500, was only partially covered by insurance, as was A. B. Hull’s wholesale grocery in Savannah, Georgia which included stock and building losses totaling $50,000 with only $31,000 in insurance, and J. H. Young’s loss, estimated at about $1,750, was barely covered at all.[8]

Robberies were another frequent problem of grocers in the North and South.[9] Thieves stole money and goods at the buildings and in transport. Since most grocers just owned small stores, these losses could be deeply felt, especially in the financially drained South.

Various other issues hampered the grocery business across the states after the Civil War. These included challenges like flooding, building collapse, financial scares, and the Spanish American War of 1898. For example, shortly after a financial panic in 1873, grocery sales began improving, especially in the North and West; in 1877, in New York City, the front wall of a five-floor brick grocery storehouse collapsed for no apparent reason; and in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889, there was a flood which took over two thousand lives and destroyed many businesses; thankfully, just a few months later it was reported that thirty-six local grocery stores were back in business.[10]

Despite these many trials, the number of grocers and stores continued to grow, reforms were implemented, and the variety of provisions multiplied. Even the stores that failed tended to have more assets than debt. Their problem was frequently cash flow. According to the Wright Brothers, their “failure was caused by the firm granting too extensive credit to its customers.”[11] When Alfred Williamson’s decades old store in New York failed, his assets were valued at $20,000, but his debts only amounted to $10,000, and when the Bollman Brothers wholesale grocery of Charleston, South Carolina went under, its liabilities were $125,000, but its assets were two times the amount.[12]

Postbellum grocers across the states succeeded in overcoming the obstacles to provide food for the people, to expand, and to start new businesses. According to one article in 1879, the outlook for grocery sales was the best it had been since the war with people looking for fine goods, not just staples; also, trade in the South was doing very well, better than in the West.[13] For the North, by 1894, in New York City, a grocery palace was built that was five stories high, covered several lots, and had electric elevators.[14] In an 1895 questionnaire, sixty-four percent of southern jobbers and sixty-five percent of northeastern jobbers indicated a definite improvement in the grocery business over the past year.[15] The grocery trade was continuing apace in both North and South.


[1] This method is based on the description of statistical inference in Lance E. Davis, Jonathan R. Hughes, and Stanley Reiter, “Aspects of Quantitative Research in Economic History,” The Journal of Economic History 20, no. 4 (December 1960): 540 and on the description of the evident correspondence between similar economic events and similar data patterns in Randall Morck and Bernard Yeung, “Economics, History, and Causation,” The Business History Review 85, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 50-51.

[2] Susan V. Spellman, Cornering the Market: Independent Grocers and Innovation in American Small Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 23-24; Zetta Joseph, “Louis Joseph of Big Pine, California.” Western States Jewish History 19, no. 3 (April 1987): 197.

[3] Spellman, Cornering the Market, 23; Joseph, “Louis Joseph,” 197; Matthew R. Hall, “‘The Reliable Grocer’: Consumerism in a New South Town, 1875-1900,” The North Carolina Historical Review 90, no. 3 (July 2013): 262.

[4] Spellman, Cornering the Market, 18; “Grocery Trade Failure,” New York Times, September 19, 1888, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times.

[5] Hall, “Reliable Grocer,” 262.

[6] Ibid. 

[7] All newspaper articles are taken from the ProQuest Historical Newspapers collection available in the Jerry Falwell Library at Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. “Fire in South Washington Grocery,” Washington Post, August 26, 1896; “Costly Blaze in Grocery Store,” Washington Post, December 14, 1898; “Fire in Big Grocery House,” New York Times, February 2, 1900; “Grocery Store Burned,” Sun, August 6, 1900.

[8] “Grocery Store Burned”; “Costly Blaze in Grocery Store.”; “Incendiary Fire at Savannah,” Washington Post, September 24, 1896; “Grocery Store Destroyed,” Washington Post, May 22, 1893.

[9]  “Grocery Store Robbed by Burglars,” New York Times, March 5, 1884; “Three Grocery Thieves Arraigned,” Washington Post, January 19, 1894.

[10] “The Grocery Trade,” New York Times, September 23, 1876; “Fall of A Great Building,” New York Times, May 9, 1877; “Johnstown Recovering: Thirty-Six Groceries and Fifty-One Saloons Doing Business Again,” New York Times, September 10, 1889.

[11] “Grocery Trade Failure.”

[12] “S. H. Williamson’s Son Assigns: An Old Fancy Groceries House Fails – Liabilities, $10,000; Assets, $20,000,” New York Times, August 19, 1900; “Charleston Grocery Firm Fails,” Washington Post, December 26, 1894.

[13] “Groceries: The Brightest Outlook Since War Times,” New York Times, September 29, 1879.

[14] “A Beautiful Building: Acker, Merrall & Condit’s New Grocery Palace,” New York Times, May 9, 1894.

[15] “Increase in Grocery Trade,” New York Times, July 30, 1897; “Grocery Trade Improving,” Washington Post, July 31, 1897.