Montgomery Ward Began on One Page in 1872. In 2000 It Announced the End

Montgomery Ward began in Chicago in August 1872 as a one-page mail-order list of 163 items, and on December 28, 2000, it filed in Delaware to liquidate a chain of 250 stores. This is the story between those two pieces of paper: the newspaper that attacked the firm and then took it back, the promise printed inside the 1875 catalogue, the stores of the 1920s, Sewell Avery's rescue in the Depression, the wartime seizure of 1944, and the years the company opened no new stores. It is told from the records we could open: the company's catalogues of 1875 and 1922, the Chicago Tribune of 1873, the National Park Service history of the Catalog House, Executive Orders 9438 and 9508, the federal court rulings of 1945, Time magazine of 1938, 1959 and 1985, and the Delaware bankruptcy court's account of the end. Old dollars are also given in estimated 2026 purchasing power (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis CPI). Where the record goes quiet, the video says so. Hometown Almanac tells the everyday history of small-town America, from the records. The pictures are credited archive photographs and AI-assisted illustrations, labelled on screen. Montgomery Ward is a trademark of its present owner; this channel is not connected with it. 0:00 1872: One Page in Chicago 3:45 1873: Grangers, Beware 6:34 1896: The Mail Reaches the Farm 9:29 1922: Five Million Names 11:36 1931: Sewell Avery 13:32 1944: The Seizure 17:03 1945: Build or Wait 19:48 1968: New Owners 21:57 2000: The Last Filing Sources: • Ralph J. Christian. 1977. Montgomery Ward and Company Complex: National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form, with 1980 correction. National Park Service, sections 7–8. • Montgomery Ward and Co. 1875. Catalogue No. 13, Spring and Summer. Chicago, inside front cover and pp. 1–5. Winterthur Library. • Montgomery Ward and Co. 1922. Catalogue No. 97, Fall and Winter 1922–23: Golden Jubilee. Chicago, “The Romance of Montgomery Ward and Co.” and introductory photographic pages. • Chicago Tribune. 1873. “Grangers, Beware!” November 8; “Montgomery, Ward and Co.” December 24. Transcribed in Chicagology, “Montgomery Ward—Phase I.” • United States Postal Service, Historian. 2013. Rural Free Delivery. August, citing the Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1897, pp. 112–114. • Smithsonian Institution Libraries. n.d. Parcel Post: Delivery of Dreams. “Advertisement for Farm Products by Parcel Post,” “Price List of Groceries,” and “Sears, Roebuck and Co. Mail-Order Office in Kodiak, Alaska.” • Illinois State Archives. n.d. Ward v. Field Museum, 241 Ill. 496 (1909). 100 Most Valuable Documents, no. 60. • TIME. 1938. “Business: Banana Peeling.” November 14. • TIME. 1959. “Business: Avery Out, Expansion Up.” May 4. • John S. Demott. 1985. “Calling It Quits.” TIME, May 20. • Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1944. Executive Order 9438, April 25: Authorizing the Secretary of Commerce to Take Possession of and to Operate the Plants and Facilities of Montgomery Ward and Company, Located in Chicago, Illinois. The American Presidency Project. • Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1944. Executive Order 9508, December 27. Federal Register 9, December 29, pp. 15079–15081. • United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois. 1945. United States v. Montgomery Ward and Co., 58 F. Supp. 408, January 27. • United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 1945. United States v. Montgomery Ward and Co., 150 F.2d 369, June 8, pp. 373–376. • International Directory of Company Histories. n.d. “Montgomery Ward and Co., Incorporated.” Reproduced by Company Histories. • Home Textiles Today. 2001. “Wards Calls It Quits.” January 1. • United States Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware. 2008. In re Montgomery Ward, L.L.C., 388 B.R. 49, March 12, pp. 51–52. • United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. 2008. Topolewski America, Inc. v. Under Armour, Inc., Opposition No. 91169578, May 8, p. 5. • Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. 2026. Consumer Price Index, 1800–. Annual Average Index, 1967=100. • Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. 2026. Consumer Price Index, 1913–. Annual Average CPI table. • Neely Tucker. 2024. “How Johnny Marks, King of Christmas Hits, Made ‘Rudolph’ a Classic.” Library of Congress, Timeless, December. #MontgomeryWard #AmericanHistory #RetailHistory #MainStreet