yesterday's tennessee

United Grocery Company
Our 50th Year, 1905-1955

from the collection of Brenda Fiddler

give them an average earning of ten per cent per annum, and enough to prove that the baby was no longer that, but a full-fledged youth, growing and flourishing with the hardy stock of the area.  The directors of the company wisely built a comfortable surplus fund, and expansion justified the doubling of the capital stock, which had originally been $25,000.00.

In the beginning, the only salesman was W. C. Fanning, then in the first days of his long and faithful association with the company and with the merchants that it has served so well.  The term “traveling salesman” meant just that, but travel in those days was by horse and buggy, by horseback and on foot, or by means of the rails that had been laid only eighteen years before.  It had not been too long since David Crockett and his fellow pioneers had hunted bear in what is now Henderson County or since Joseph Wilson had killed a “fine buck” in the forests where Lexington now stands.  Only a few short years before, the War Between the States had raged through the countryside, and the very territory that Mr. Fanning covered abounded in stories of the battles such as the one at Parker’s Crossroads, the skirmish near Lexington, and nearby Shiloh, where the first great battle of the western campaign was fought.

But now the battle was for business – a battle against the terrain – poor roads, slow trains and mud, and against a very real Friday deadline, when orders had to be filled.  The company was waging a battle of logistics, the objective being to supply

[photo caption]

A present day view of United Grocery Company