The General Store

This exhibit is based on the Goss & Darling general store. General stores in the 1840's served many purposes in frontier towns like Kalamazoo. They sold needed merchandise, but they also purchased produce from local farmers which they then either re-sold locally or shipped to eastern markets, like Detroit. Milo Goss and Rufus Darling owned the store, which was located at the southeast corner of Burdick and Michigan (today the site of PNC Bank).

Goss & Darling advertisements ran in the weekly Kalamazoo Gazette throughout 1847 and 1848. Their advertised merchandise is similar to what is found in the store’s original ledgers. The store carried fabrics and sewing goods, groceries, tools and hardware, boots and shoes, books, and other products that were not made locally. The Goss & Darling ledger helps illustrate the role of store credit in the local economy. There, the store owners kept track of the value of goods that they sold on credit to their customers as well as the payments they received. Since most customers were farmers, the store often sold more on credit in the spring and summer (when farmers were most likely short of cash) and received payment from the farmers after they harvested their crops in the fall.

Goss & Darling also advertised that they would buy 10,000 bushels each of oats and wheat. Farmers could either sell produce, like oats and wheat or eggs and butter, to the store, or they could sell their grain to a grain mill operator and use that income to settle their accounts at the general store. General stores were often informal community centers. It was not uncommon that the general store in small towns would serve as the local post office. People came to the store to send mail and pick up any letters they might have received. There was no home delivery in those days. If someone had received a letter, they might share news from “back east” with others in the store.

The general store was also a gathering place. People would sit around the warm stove in the winter and catch up on news or play a game of cards with other customers who came to the store on business. Today’s superstores with groceries, clothing, and every imaginable consumer good may offer as much variety as Goss & Darling’s store did in the 1840s. As the exhibit makes clear, though, the general store was much more than a place to shop.

To read more, visit: www.kalamazoomuseum.org/info/museON/museographies