Sunday, August 9, 2015

The Role Macy's Played in Our Family Story

Macy's seems to hold a special place in our hearts and I thought you might enjoy the following outline of some interesting Macy's history.  This was written by Marie Wells, volunteer coordinator for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.  At the end of each month, volunteers receive an email from Marie containing interesting tidbits such as these.  I think it tells an interesting story.


"Ever wonder why the Macy’s department store logo boasts a red star?  I’d never really thought about it myself, as I assumed that some corporate bigwigs designed it years ago.

Rowland Hussey Macy was born on August 30, 1822, on Nantucket Island, the son of John Macy and Elizabeth Myrick Barnard Macy.  He was a descendent of Thomas Macy (1608-1682), who, while living in what it now Amesbury, MA, was convicted in 1659 of violating the 1655 Massachusetts Bay Colony law that stated "no Quaker be entertained by any person or persons with this government; under penalty of £5 for every such default, or be whipped".  His crime? Giving shelter to three Quakers during a rain storm.  Thomas Macy was fined and admonished by the government; two of the three men he sheltered were hung on Boston Common.  Some tellings of the Macy family history has it that he – a staunch Baptist - fled immediately for a more tolerant landscape, hauling his wife and five children off to Nantucket (part of New York until 1709).  In reality, it wasn’t until late 1659 that Thomas Macy and his family became the first European settlers on the island.

Selling dry goods was in Rowland Macy’s genes:  his father was a shopkeeper.  Macy did not start out in life helping to run the family business, however.  At the tender age of fifteen, he went to sea as part of the crew on a whaling ship, seafaring being a somewhat more romantic pursuit to a teenager than helping dad in the family store.  Four years later, however, he had given up the sea and was behind the counter at John Macy’s shop.  Still restless, however, he headed for the mainland and opened a needle-and-thread store in Boston when he was 22, but the business failed.  His second attempt, a dry goods store he opened in 1846, also came a cropper.  He threw in with his brother-in-law for a time, helping run his shop.  But adventure still called, and Macy left Boston for gold rush country in California in 1849.  Pardon the pun, but that venture didn’t pan out, either.  He came home to Massachusetts, set up shop in Haverhill in 1851, and finally started to make a go of it.  History records that Macy made $11.06 in sales on opening day, but he was not daunted.  Macy sincerely believed that advertising and promotion were essential to retail success:  in 1854, about 100 people watched the very first Macy-sponsored parade as it took place in Haverhill.  It was small, but it was a start.

Bright lights and the big city beckoned, however, and R. H. Macy relocated to New York City in 1858, where he opened a modest eponymous store in a low-rent part of town.  At long last, he began to experience the success that had eluded him for years.  Gradually moving uptown as the store prospered, Macy was the very soul of retailing innovation.  Prices were clearly marked and were not negotiable, which made it possible to place eye-catching advertisements in all the New York newspapers. Credit was not extended; all sales were in cash, unheard of for the time. He is credited with hiring the first in-store Santa Claus, helping to commercialize Christmas in the United States as never before. With that shrewd eye he had for publicity, he named Margaret Getchell as store manager in 1866, creating the first female executive in American retailing. 

The store was successful beyond his wildest dreams.  In 1875, he enlisted the help of two partners to run the burgeoning business:   Robert M. Valentine; and Abiel T. La Forge. By the time of Macy’s death two years later, the store had spread across a collection of eleven different buildings at 18th and Broadway.  And that was still only the beginning.  The Macy family owned the store until 1895, when brothers Isador and Nathan Strauss took over operations after having run a crockery story their father founded in Macy’s basement (the forerunner of The Cellar?).  Sadly, Isador and his wife Ida perished on the Titanic.
Today, Macy’s is the world’s largest retailer, mainly through acquisitions and mergers.  By my unofficial count, the store that Rowland Hussey Macy founded has swallowed at least 29 venerable American department stores.  The list includes the iconic Boston landmark store, Jordan Marsh.  That store had its foundation a decade earlier than R.H. Macy’s Haverhill store when Eben Dyer Jordan opened a dry goods store in Boston in 1841.  But that’s a story for another time.
In answer to the question concerning the red star in the Macy’s logo, when Macy put to sea on the whaler out of Nantucket as a teenager, he had a red star tattooed on his hand, as seamen will do.  It was Macy himself who determined the star would always be a part of the store’s name."

If you've hung in here long enough to get this far in the post, it might also interest you to know that seamen chose red star tattoos for protection.  Since the stars were used as guides out at sea, the tattoo star was thought to lead the seaman home under its guidance.  It surprises me to learn that Macy's has deep New England/Massachusetts roots.  

You might remember that Macy's played a big role in my very first visit to West Islip with James.  I had taken a bus trip to NYC with some school friends.  James was at home that weekend and planned to pick me up at the end of the day at Macy's near the restaurant in the basement.  My friends didn't want to leave me alone in NYC until they saw James, but we could not find each other that day and the bus had to leave without me.  Eventually we got it figured out--even without the convenience of cell phones or GPS--imagine that.  Perhaps the red star helped guide James that day: the beginning of our own "story".
 

No comments:

Post a Comment