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".
