by Anne Motto, F.M. Kirby Curator of Collections
September 24, 2024
Can I interest you in a pineapple? Just 15¢! One of our most popular foreign fruits! How about a dozen eggs? Fresh from Hackettstown! Just 20¢! Lobster? Heinz ketchup? Japanese rice? These surprisingly modern offerings were all in stock at a local turn-of-the-century grocery store run by siblings Elmer and Susan A. Dickerson. Opened in 1893, the business would pass down through four generations of their Mt. Tabor family, eventually becoming a Foodtown before ultimately closing in 2018. Now, thanks to a recent donation of thousands of documents from its first decade of operation, MCHS can paint an unexpectedly vivid picture of the Denville enterprise’s daily operations, suppliers, sales, and clientele.
Local vendors from Morristown, Dover, and Hackettstown supplied some of its inventory, but preserved invoices indicate they are dwarfed in number by products from importers, wholesalers, and national brands based in Newark, New York, and even Chicago. In addition to the expected staples of eggs, butter, flour, grain, beef, and lard, the Dickersons also received regular shipments of “fancy” bananas, figs, melons, California plums, sardines, oolong tea, sweet potatoes, vanilla extract, ginger, cloves, root beer, and seltzer. Heinz pickles and ketchup, Nestlé condensed milk, and Nabisco graham crackers were also frequently among their orders.
Other documents in the collection speak to the store’s day-to-day operation: bills of lading for crates of stock arriving aboard the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, telephone bills from as early as 1899, electricity bills, and Standard Oil invoices for deliveries of oil. The picture is completed by itemized ledgers of the sales made each day, revealing which items were most in demand and the prices at which they were sold (in 1901, olive oil was 25¢, coconut was 10¢). Most customers though, purchased baked goods produced by the store and handful other items (individual purchases were typically under $2.00).
This extensive collection is still in the process of being catalogued and a second cache from the store’s WWII years, including ration stamps, has yet to be fully inventoried, leaving a fascinating second chapter to the story yet to be explored.
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