Collection ID:

Collection context

Summary

Abstract:
This collection encompasses material related to the JW Smith Dry Goods Company which was in business from 1852 through 1976, the longest running department store of its time.
Extent:
Seven Boxes
Language:
English

Background

Scope and Content:

This collection encompasses material from when JW Smith took over the dry goods business in 1852 through when the business closed in 1976. Three boxes of material are related mainly to Solomon E Smith and the Pierson family of various deeds and legal papers. JW Smith Company material includes photos, articles, publications, advertising cards, ledgers, and other ephemera.

There is a small amount of material related to Roenke & Rogers and the Roenke family. Other materials from a business called JW Smith’s Home Furnishings & Oriental Rugs were collected in the 1990s and 2000s by a volunteer/archivist, Rich Slocum, and it is unclear its relation to the JW Smith Company.

Biographical / Historical:

In 1840, at 18 years old, John W Smith began working under HJ Hughes in his dry goods store at 28 Seneca Street. His brother Solomon, 14, joined him. In 1847, Hughes sold his business to JW Smith and Stewart Cobb, another Geneva dry goods merchant. They renamed the business Cobb & Smith. In 1852, Cobb sold his shares to John and Solomon who rename it JW Smith and Company.

The company expanded several times, including in 1866 when they extended back through to Linden Street and joined the buildings together and in 1901 they add a second building for men's furnishings and a beauty parlor. From 1852, the company grew from six sales people to seventy by 1948. It’s reported in the Geneva Daily Times in 1948 that JW Smith employed one of the first sales ladies in the country when they hired Augusta Andrus in 1876.

Their address changes when the street numbers are altered in 1894 to become 40-42 Seneca Street. After John's death in 1878, Solomon took over the business until his own death in 1900. By this time, a stock company had formed and renamed the business JW Smith Dry Goods and Company.

In 1922 a three story brick structure is added for the china department, infants and children's departments, and a toy department Management of the company fell to different people until 1929 when Henry & R. Richard Roenke merged their dry goods store, at 26-28 Seneca Street with JW Smith Dry Goods. They take over management for a year before acquiring a controlling interest in the company.

In 1976, JW Smith Dry Goods Company closed as the oldest continuously open department store in the United States and had been in the Roenke family since their purchase in 1929.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access

RESTRICTIONS:

Minimal access to ledgers unless under staff supervision.

LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
Geneva History Museum
543 South Main Street
Geneva, NY 14456, United States
CONTACT:
315-789-5151
archivist@historicgeneva.org