Howe Brothers, Inc. – THE Place to Shop in Carrollton

Today we focus on Howe Brothers, Inc., purveyors of household goods and fashionable clothing for men and women.

In this fading image, circa 1910, Robert J. Howe stands with three women who could be store employees or Howe family members.

The immigrant John Howe launched the store, possibly in the late 1870s, and his sons had a hand in management of day-to-day operations. While first-born son William Ficklin Howe was more focused on the family's woolen mill and pants factory, his younger brothers John Irvin Howe, Robert James Howe (father of Sarah, the scrapbooker), and Joseph Brown Howe were running the store. The youngest son, George Thompson Howe, apparently had a role at the store, too, before he died in 1881¹ at 21 years of age.

By 1900, brothers John and George had died, and only Robert's and Joseph's names were on the store's letterhead. On 4 May 1900, the immigrant's first-born son William used the store stationery to write to his son John Junior Howe about family news. In the letter, he mentions that business is going well:

We have had a fine trade at the store all the week. Were very busy yesterday.

Apparently, Robert and Joseph shared responsibility as buyers, traveling to wholesalers to select the goods that would be sold at the store. Clippings, letters, and Sarah's notes frequently mention her father's trips to markets in New York and other cities. One example is a society column from a Carrollton newspaper. Her father's name is indicated in the clipping by an arrow.

Joseph was the "veteran retailer" featured in a Carrollton Democrat article. While Sarah (as usual) did not record the date of this clipping, the article's content helps set the publication year as 1927. Joseph Brown Howe was born March 7, 1857;² the article appears to have been published a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. (The last line of the article's left column is missing from the scrapbook.)


Joseph, who died on Dec. 7, 1929,² said in the interview: "There were five boys in that store, and I'm the only one left." Joseph was in the middle of the birth order among the seven Howe siblings to reach adulthood. He outlived all four of his brothers and one of his sisters. His sister Sarah Varena "Sallie" Howe died in 1950 at 87 years of age.

















Robert and Joseph also wrote the Howe Brothers ads published in the Carrollton Democrat and possibly in other papers in the northern Kentucky and southern Ohio area. Sarah called her father's writing style "refined" and "sophisticated." She  preferred it over the "flamboyant" ads written by her Uncle Joe.
The two ads illustrate Sarah's point. Sarah proudly noted on one ad: "Papa wrote this one." Elsewhere on the page, she wrote, "One of Papa's advertisements, nothing sensational, just dignified statement."


The other ad was the work of Sarah's Uncle Joe, who perhaps was the more outgoing of the two and more prone to a "hard sell" approach.

In 1893, when Sarah was 10 years old, she tried her own hand at writing ads for Howe Brothers, taking liberties with popular nursery rhymes. She commented that she knew they weren't as good as her father's, and she expressed little hope they would be published.

Endnotes
¹ Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Memorial #22896462. Original source: Methodist Church Cemetery, Carrollton, Kentucky
² Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Memorial #31550928. Original source: Carrollton IOOF Cemetery, Carrollton, Carroll County, Kentucky