Have you heard this before?

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Have you heard this before?

Postby hammerdown7 » Tue Jan 20, 2015 2:01 pm

If you were in the market for a watch in 1880,
would you know where to get one?
You would go to a store, right?

Well, of course you could do that, but if you wanted one
that was cheaper and a bit better than most of the store watches,
you went to the train station! Sound a bit funny?

Well, for about 500 towns across the northern United States ,
that's where the best watches were found.

Why were the best watches found at the train station?

The railroad company wasn't selling the watches, not at all.

The telegraph operator was.
Most of the time the telegraph operator was located
in the railroad station because the telegraph lines
followed the railroad tracks from town to town.

It was usually the shortest distance and the right-of-ways
had already been secured for the rail line.

Most of the station agents were also skilled telegraph
operators and that was the primary way that
they communicated with the railroad.

They would know when trains left the previous
station and when they were due at their next station.

And it was the telegraph operator who had the watches.

As a matter of fact, they sold more of them than almost
all the stores combined for a period of about 9 years.

This was all arranged by "Richard",
who was a telegraph operator himself.

He was on duty in the North Redwood,
Minnesota train station one day when a
load of watches arrived from the East.

It was a huge crate of pocket watches.
No one ever came to claim them.

So Richard sent a telegram to the manufacturer and
asked them what they wanted to do with the watches.

The manufacturer didn't want to pay the freight back,
so they wired Richard to see if he could sell them.
So Richard did.

He sent a wire to every agent in the system asking
them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch.

He sold the entire case in less than two days and at a handsome profit.

That started it all.
He ordered more watches from the watch company
and encouraged the telegraph operators to set up a
display case in the station offering high quality
watches for a cheap price to all the travelers.

It worked!

It didn't take long for the word to spread and, before long,
people other than travelers came to the train station to buy watches.

Richard became so busy that he had to hire a
professional watch maker to help him with the orders.

That was Alvah.

And the rest is history as they say.
The business took off and soon expanded to many other lines of dry goods.
Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to Chicago --
and it's still there.

YES, IT'S A LITTLE KNOWN FACT that for a while in the 1880's,
the biggest watch retailer in the country was at the train station.

It all started with a telegraph operator:
Richard Sears and his partner Alvah Roebuck!

Bet You Didn't Know That!!!
OK, Maybe you did; I didn't!

Now that's History!!!!!
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby crawfw » Tue Jan 20, 2015 3:45 pm

COOL STORY :th:
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby marco_1978_spyder » Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:53 pm

Cool. At the 1st house I grew up in... it was situated across the street from a rail line that was built around 1850. Even before that the actual road was the right of way for a defunct Trolley line...Hence the name "Trolley Blvd." Along the tracks, to this day are line of small telephone poles. I wonder if these are poles from the old telegraph lines.

The line was consolidated in the 1990's, but the CSX still owns the ROW. And those telegraph poles are still there. No more wires attached though.
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby monzabug350 » Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:49 pm

No I did not but thanks for the history lesson!
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby Monza Harry » Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:59 pm

Dick that is some Cool S :censored: T! I do find that sort of thing very interesting, and I would like to thank You for Sharing. It amazes me that so many of the biggest success stories seem to start from pure chance. Harry :th:
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby Sunula66 » Fri Jan 23, 2015 1:27 pm

Thanks for that, I love history!
Did you know that Al Cappones lawyer "fast Eddy" when he finally was shot by the mob, they found a note to Eddy's son wishing he would grow up with decent morals and become a better man than he was...he single handedly shot up 5 Jap planes and disrupted their formation and caused them to retreat while almost out of fuel and bullets! He barely made it back to safety and when they checked his mission camera, they saw his heroics!!....The O'Hare airport was named after him!!!
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby monzabug350 » Sat Jan 24, 2015 6:18 pm

This just reminded me to check on a pocket watch I inherited from my father who had given to him by his father (my great grand dad) it is a Hamilton gold pocket watch he won at the 1910 worlds fair. The story goes grand dad won at a shooting gallery for the most targets hit (not sure how many) but it was the top prize. It still runs and keeps time within a min. per day. Nice to have some thing over a century old that runs. Hope I can last that long and still keep tickin.
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Re: Have you heard this before?

Postby Keigger » Thu Feb 19, 2015 12:29 am

My father had an old pocket watch that was handed down from his grandfather, it was from the 1800's, my father cherished that watch, he had it repaired and tuned every 10 years or so, every time I took it out of the box he kept it in, he would get very emotional. I made a very tough decision, what to do with it when my father passed, I took it with me to the funeral home to let him see it one last time, then I slipped it into his left shirt pocket fully wound and humming like a sewing machine, now it will be with him forever, oh and it was bought from a train station in Mansfield Ohio! (this story made my hair stand up!)
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