My Great Grandfather’s Treasure
Fifty Years in the Wool Trading, as remembered and dictated by Marcus Harris, is a sixty-page softcover book I found when I was ten years old on a bookshelf in the living room of our small bungalow house in Northbrook, Illinois. My great-grandfather was born in the United States, and his parents, Gustav and Stella, were born in Prussia and Rhineland, respectively.
Marcus Harris, born on August 5, 1966, just at the end of the Civil War, lived in a modest home in Hannibal, Missouri, an important river port for the time and famed for the fact that Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, was a resident. He was the fifth of six children and the second of three sons.
In 1869, when Marcus Harris was three, the family moved to St. Louis and Warrensburg, Missouri. Gustav Harris rented a small place and went into business. He bought hides, wool, and anything he could trade to make a profit. Marcus and his older brother Benjamin helped him after school hours.
In 1878, Marcus Harris received his graduation certificate from the Warrensburg Grammar School. He loved baseball. At twelve, he helped the family business by going on the road. He traveled to small towns, buying and selling. He was now in the family business.
In December 1885, a blizzard struck Kansas, killing thousands of cattle on the range. This was the pivotal point. The business, which was Marcus Harris' life's work, got its beginning. Marcus Harris took the long and arduous trip west to Dodge City, Kansas, home of the gambling Gateway, to purchase the cheap hides from the blizzard-killed cattle. He made a modest profit from this trip of buying and then selling. The Harris Wool and Fur business had its start. The money the Harris brothers took from the Dodge City venture marked the beginning of Harris's prosperity.
He estimated that the Harris companies in St. Louis handled over 600,000,000 pounds of wool and far more than $50,000,000 worth of raw furs that became garments worth probably between $300 and 400 million dollars in 1949 prices when he wrote his memoir.
Marcus and his wife Edith had six children and eleven grandchildren. I am one of his great-grandchildren. Each time I read his memoir, it is from a different point of view. When I was ten, I did not understand the significance of a family business, immigration, hard work and success, adventure and vision, loss and rebuilding. In my twenties and thirties, I felt proud that I was related to him, yet I was too busy starting a career and raising a family to research and document his illustrious life. Sadly, I did not think to ask questions about his life when I met his daughters, my great-aunts. When he liquidated his first business, he started a second with his three daughters in the early 1940s. I can only imagine the incredible, impactful stories they could have told me.
For so many years, I had an image of him in a wheelchair at my parent's wedding in 1949, right before he died. That was how he appeared in their wedding photos. When I read his story now, I catch an authentic glimpse of him. I can feel his vitality, strength, warmth, excitement, drive, and ambition for life. I can imagine the joy and pride I might have felt at being at his house for Christmas with our large family joyfully milling about.
He was a remarkable man. He inspires me today just as he would his untold number of great-great and great-great-great grandchildren. His story is part of the reason I am passionate about helping my clients write their legacy business stories. These are treasures that live on for generations.