tween St. Louis and the East were by river to New
Orleans, and thence by sea and by river to Pittsburgh,
and thence by wagons to Philadelphia. Sixty days
was then quick time between New York and St. Louis,
and purchases of goods for the spring sates of March
and April were made in the preceding September;
those for the fall sales were made in June and July,
and the arrivals of boats from New Orleans and Pitts-
burgh with the season's stock of goods for the dif-
ferent merchants of the town formed marked events.
The communication with the interior was even less
convenient, and sales were made always upon six
months' time, with an indefinite period for collec-
tion. Commencing thus with a business of less than
one hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Crow has remained
at the head of the firm, 'increasing its business to
millions of dollars per annum, and passing through
all the financial revulsions that have marked the his-
tory of the West, in some of which as high as thirty
per cent, interest was paid for the use of money that
was even then obtainable only upon pledges of per-
sonal property, and not once did his house suspend or
fail to meet all obligations promptly at the date of
maturity. In 1837 the firm removed to a three-story
brick house on the west side of Main Street, at the
corner of Locust, belonging to Gen. Ashley, and in
1839 or 1840 to the O'Fallon block, nearly opposite
that location. In this last building the firm continued
in business until burned out by the fire of 1849,
changing its style from Crow & Tevis to that of Crow,
Tevis & McCreery, and afterwards, upon the retire-
ment of Mr. Tevis, to that of Crow, McCreery &
Barksdale. Up to this time the house had met and
successfully passed through two panics, and when
their stock of goods was destroyed by the " great
fire," the members of the firm instead of faltering, as
others of their associates did, were only spurred to
greater enterprise. In the fall of 1849, Mr. Crow
built a fine four-story brick warehouse at No. 216
Main Street, to which the business was removed.
83



Shortly after that date Mr. Barksdale retired to
engage in the banking business, and the firm-name
was changed to that of Crow, McCreery & 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 done, 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 seems
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



1302



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-
lion 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 & CO.,
Corner Fifth and St. ChiirK's 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 835,000,000. 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 twentv houses encashed in

m

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



TRADE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES.



1303



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- i
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- I
pied the same locality for twenty-seven years, during j
which time its business connections and volume of |
trade have steadily and continually increased, and its i
reputation for taste and judgment, like its commercial j
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 th& 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, 1801). His parents had other children, Perry
S. Kennard, of St. Louis ; Robert 0., 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 beeu 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



1304



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 Asiatic cholera 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 epidemics and
of the way to combat diseases of the kind which he
afterwards put to such exemplary and heroic use
during the visits of the cholera plague to Lexington
and St. Louis. In the former city his services iu
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 deceased.

Mrs. Kennard's family was good old Maryland
stock all round. There are no better people in
ancient Baltimore County than those who bear the
names of Cockey, Deye, and Owings. Thomas
Mummey's grandfather was Joshua, son of Richard
Owings, an extensive owner of mill-seats ; his grand-
mother was Mary Cockey, 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 Cockey (Owings) was born
Dec. 10, 1716, and died Feb. 6, 1768, the mother
of ten children. One of these children, Marcella,
born July 5, 1748, married Thomas Worthington,
and lived to be ninety-six years old. Another, Re-
becca, born Jan. 27, 1751, was married to Samuel
Mummey, and died Dec. 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," " nmminer," is of very
frequent occurrence in and around Bremen) was one
of three brothers who came when very young from
Germany and settled in Baltimore County, trades-
men, with no fortune but their craft 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 eldest,
was born Oct. 26, 1774, in Baltimore County. He
had but scant schooling, but was a well-read man
before he died. He came to Baltimore very early to
seek his fortune, his estate at that time consisting
chiefly of a new suit of clothes 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 called him par excellence " the minute-
man." On July 13, 1797, Thomas Mummey was
married to Catharine Fishburne, of Frederick 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-
teemed.

Thomas and Catharine Mummey had thirteen chil-
dren, of whom Rebecca, the wife of John Kennard,
was the eighth. " Sister" Mummey, as all her con-
temporaries used to call 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 " class"
and prayer-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



TRADE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES.



1305



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 minute-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 died in 1832 each
of his children got a clean little fortune out of his
estate. He was a man of aifairs, 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 panic, collapse,
and depression of 1837, when that section, the centre
of the gigantic land speculations, suffered most, because
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 there
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 forces 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 recollect 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 tact 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 quickness
and dispatch were 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 interment 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, tact, discrimination, good taste, prompt meth-
ods, close scrutiny, square and upright dealings, and
safe and sound financiering are part of the capital and
the stock in trade of the house to-day. It is not only



1306



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 her 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-