My husband and I have more or less gone full circle in our buying habits.
We started our married life in western Montana. The nearest town was a mere mile away, but its single general store carried only minimal supplies.
For groceries, we drove about 20 miles. For most clothing and furnishing purchases, we turned to our Montgomery Ward or Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs.
We were still shopping some by catalog when we transferred to Central Oregon in the 1970s, but by the time we moved to the Kanawha Valley in the early 1980s, Sears and Wards were cutting back on mailing the thick catalogs. It wasn't a problem because we had ample shopping close at hand.
Six years ago, we returned to rural living. We are now about 12 miles from the nearest municipality, where there is a single supermarket and no clothing store. Wal-Mart, Kmart and Peebles are about 25 miles from us. For anything else, the drive is longer.
Neither of us likes to shop or do much distance driving. So for gifts for grandchildren and even some of our own purchases, we've again turned to mail order.
But now we use the Internet.
And the catalogs we get in the mailbox don't compare to those weighty Sears and Wards books. Even as urban kids, my brother and I dreamed our way through the toy sections of those catalogs each holiday season.
Memories of those tomes resurfaced when I found replicas of old Wards and Sears catalogs on the book-sale shelves of our county library.
These miniature replicas, however, predated the catalogs of my experience, being 1894-95 and 1900 editions. The editor, Illinois writer Joseph Schroeder Jr., provided some history in the prefaces.
At a period of increasing consumer demand across the nation, Richard Warren Sears made a timely entrance in the mail order business to market - timepieces.
A Minnesota native working as a railroad station agent, Sears in 1886 was offered a shipment of watches on consignment. It proved profitable enough that he quit the railroad and started a mail-order watch business, first in Minneapolis and then in Chicago.
My husband and I have more or less gone full circle in our buying habits.
We started our married life in western Montana. The nearest town was a mere mile away, but its single general store carried only minimal supplies.
For groceries, we drove about 20 miles. For most clothing and furnishing purchases, we turned to our Montgomery Ward or Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs.
We were still shopping some by catalog when we transferred to Central Oregon in the 1970s, but by the time we moved to the Kanawha Valley in the early 1980s, Sears and Wards were cutting back on mailing the thick catalogs. It wasn't a problem because we had ample shopping close at hand.
Six years ago, we returned to rural living. We are now about 12 miles from the nearest municipality, where there is a single supermarket and no clothing store. Wal-Mart, Kmart and Peebles are about 25 miles from us. For anything else, the drive is longer.
Neither of us likes to shop or do much distance driving. So for gifts for grandchildren and even some of our own purchases, we've again turned to mail order.
But now we use the Internet.
And the catalogs we get in the mailbox don't compare to those weighty Sears and Wards books. Even as urban kids, my brother and I dreamed our way through the toy sections of those catalogs each holiday season.
Memories of those tomes resurfaced when I found replicas of old Wards and Sears catalogs on the book-sale shelves of our county library.
These miniature replicas, however, predated the catalogs of my experience, being 1894-95 and 1900 editions. The editor, Illinois writer Joseph Schroeder Jr., provided some history in the prefaces.
At a period of increasing consumer demand across the nation, Richard Warren Sears made a timely entrance in the mail order business to market - timepieces.
A Minnesota native working as a railroad station agent, Sears in 1886 was offered a shipment of watches on consignment. It proved profitable enough that he quit the railroad and started a mail-order watch business, first in Minneapolis and then in Chicago.
His on-again, off-again partner, Alvah Curtis Roebuck, came on the scene when he answered an ad for a watch repairman.
An 1891 catalog had 32 pages, comprising 24 of watches and eight of jewelry and sewing machines.
Just two years later the 200-page catalog offered a broad line of merchandise and was beginning to seriously compete with the almost 20 years older company founded by New Jersey native Aaron Montgomery Ward.
Ward discovered his talent for merchandising in Michigan, but it was while working for a Missouri dry goods dealer that he saw opportunity in the desire of rural residents for competitively priced goods not available to them locally.
With $1,600 he managed to save and $800 from a brother-in-law, he started the mail-order business in 1872, publishing a single sheet "catalog" of dry goods only. By 1874 there were 72 pages, and two years later the 136-page edition had the first illustrations.
The replica of the 600-page Fall & Winter Montgomery Ward & Co. catalog in 1874 that was edited by Schroeder shows farm tools, clothes, furniture, musical instruments, baby gear, patent medicines and wagons and buggies. The "optical goods department" offers spectacles and eyeglasses - no explanation of the difference - with a chart for determining astigmatism, near sightedness and "old sight," apparently meaning far-sightedness.
A full set of Encyclopedia Britannica sold for $35. Shotguns and rifles were typically $25 or less. Treadle sewing machines sold for about $20.
Or customers could order one of the 14 specialized catalogs listed on the inside back cover, most mailed free, but some requiring postage of 3 cents to 5 cents.
Both Sears and Wards issued grocery lists monthly or bimonthly, with items such as teas, coffee, dried and canned fruits, salted and canned fish and preserved meats.
That seems strange at first glance, but then again, there are now catalogs and Internet sources for specialty foods and beverages, and all just a click away.
Contact writer Evadna Bartlett at eva...@dailymail.com.
