THE NEW MILTON RACKET STORE
Part – 1
Recently I enjoyed a visit from one of our residents who also happens to be an accomplished banjo picker performing up and down the east coast from NJ to FL, Timothy McCarthy. Tim brought with him a very fascinating package of invoices, receipts, and letters that had been from the New Milton Racket Store. His appreciation for history was evident and I was honored to meet someone who shared the Society’s love and respect for history. Needless to say, I was elated by his remarkable gift to our museum. I promised to scan each item and present him with a copy of the digitized images. I would like to thank him publicly for allowing the Historical Society the opportunity to digitize these precious items so that others may view them in the future while protecting the originals. I completed the promised task and when he visited the museum this past Friday, I gave him a digitized flash drive copy and thanked him again for his gift to the county’s Historical Society.
That evening I immediately began to research the history of the Racket Store at New Milton in earnest and discovered that the name of the store was a franchised brand. I learned that each of the many racket stores throughout the southern U.S. was in fact an individually owned and operated retail business carrying a large assortment of merchandise not unlike that of most early general stores.
In an era of credit-based general stores, the “racket” was that the merchant would go to big cities like New York or Chicago and even Cleveland, or even Pittsburg to purchase lots of goods for cash. The word “racket” described the purchasing of goods in large quantities with cash at a cheaper price and then selling the items at the merchant’s own store to the residents in his home neighborhood at a saving to them, at least in theory.
Like other Racket stores, New Milton Racket Store offered everything from ladies’ corsets and fashion to men’s buckskin leather pants, shirts, and shoes, to dry goods, groceries, hardware, tableware, pots and pans, washtubs, ladies’ and men’s ready-to-wear clothing. It offered farming supplies such as paint, livestock feed, barbed wire, posthole diggers, and other merchandise at low prices. The Racket Store bought ginseng, mayapple, and yellowroot as well as collections from the fur trade, hides, and pelts, etc. It was truly a one-stop shop before the modern dept. stores were even an idea or thought.
Records indicate that the earliest known use of the term was in Asheville, where an establishment called the Racket Store opened in 1887 and closed its operation in about 1937.
In May 1888, William Henry Belk opened a store in Monroe called the New York Racket Store. “New York” was included in the name which appears to suggest a class.
New York Racket Store
The photo above of the New York Racket Store on the north side of Oak St. between 2nd and 3rd Street next to the Williams and Brosius Drug Store is a little worse for wear, but it’s made it through almost 120 years to tell us its story. (I cleaned up some of the scratches and torn ends).
The photo below is of Rouss Racket Store in Louisiana.
Racket Store in Louisiana
According to the Encyclopedia of N.C., North Carolina University of NC Press, Racket Stores began to spring up in Charlotte, Statesville, and elsewhere, but were closed prior to 1929, but the one in Asheville was in operation as late as 1937. Racket Stores also appeared elsewhere in the South, but there seem to have been only a very few in the North.
Now back to our story about the New Milton Racket Store… It was common knowledge to most local history buffs that the New Milton Racket Store was owned by Luther F. Randolph. It is commonly understood that the Randolph men were known to start businesses and hire someone else to manage that business for them, thus freeing them to invest their time and effort elsewhere for whatever other cause to which they endeavored to commit. This appears to have possibly been the case here.
A gentleman by the name of James Franklin “Frank” Ables was the man doing the purchasing of merchandise for the store during the years 1910 up to and through 1930s. I found his name on virtually every paper we had received during those years. This leads one to believe that James Franklin Ables may have been the manager of the Racket Store. Who was “Frank” Ables? I decided to return to that question in Part 2 of this article. For now, I want to focus on Luther Randolph.
I was able to discern from U. S. Census Records that in 1870, Luther F. Randolph was listed as a schoolteacher who was still residing at his father, Jepthah Randolph’s, house at the age of 23. Like his father, he was of the Seventh-Day Baptist faith.
After researching Doddridge County deeds, I found that he had purchased a one-acre piece of property which appears to possibly be the location of the store in 1876. By 1880, he was listed in the U.S. Census as the head of household, married to Jennie Ehret (daughter of Wm. And Sarah Prichard Ehret. He was listed as a merchant. Jennie Virginia died on September 4, 1886, at the age of 32 yrs. 11 months and 2 days).
While this does not prove anything on its own, it is an indication that the location of the store in theory may be correct. I have spoken to several of the locals and am in the hope of finding more information on the store itself and locating a photograph of the old store before it was torn down.
From the invoices, I ascertained the names of some of his suppliers to be: The Brown Kendall Company, Parkersburg, WV (Corsets and clothing); Cox Brothers Co, (hardware, building materials, gas, goods, pipe, and fittings), West Union, WV; Mishawaka Woolen Mfg. Co, Mishawaka, IN; William’s Hardware at Clarksburg, WV; Ferry Morse Seeds, Detroit, MI; Valvoline, Butler, PA; Payne Shoe Co., Inc., Charleston, WV; Crane Gregg & Hamiel Hat Co., Columbus, OH and so many more. But my favorites were Buckskin Manufacturing Co. (Buckskin Trousers) in Evansville, IN; J.M. Pratt from Salem, WV (furs, roots, ginseng, wool, hides, and pelts).
Mixed through the invoices and receipts, I found letters from residents requesting items to be purchased on credit and others who simply needed to borrow money with a promise to repay within a certain length of time.
The photo below shows Luther F. Randolph with his 2nd wife, Missouri “Zura” and the store’s clerks. Their names were not given.
If you should have any information or questions regarding this article, please feel free to contact me at this newspaper, email me directly at: [email protected] or call me at 304-873-1540.
God Bless.
Patricia Richards Harris
Doddridge County Historical Society