"Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back"
George Robinson Thorne and the Making of Montgomery Ward
The small-town boy leaving a hardscrabble farm to make his fortune in the West is a staple of New England legend, nowhere more so than in the Green Mountain State. Not all Vermont farms, however, were hardscrabble. The drive up Route 22A through the western part of the state takes you through farmland as beautiful today as it was when Hallett Thorn arrived in about 1810. Thorn, a Long Island-born Quaker, had married Sarah Frost and settled in Ferrisburgh by 1811. By 1816 he was raising Merino sheep in Shoreham, and, in 1833, he purchased the Stephen Spencer farm on what is now Route 22A in Addison.
Hallett and Sarah raised eleven children, of whom all but one survived to maturity and left home to make their respective ways in the world. By 1850 the Thorn household consisted of Hallett and Sarah, their sons Julius (20), William (16), and George (13) as well as Sarah’s parents, Zebulon and Elizabeth Frost. The presence of a farm hand and a domestic servant in the household suggests that the Thorn farm was a prosperous enterprise, as does its valuation at $16,000 on the 1850 Census - the highest valuation in the Town of Addison.
Hallett and Sarah’s tenth child, George Robinson Thorne (the only member of his family to add an “e” to his surname) was born on 29 September 1837. While little is known of his upbringing, we may assume that he was locally educated and enjoyed the advantages of a fairly well-to-do family. At some point before his 20th birthday, George had a dalliance with a local girl named Sally Sprigg. Sally’s father, William Sprigg, was an Englishman, and one of Addison’s several blacksmiths. In early 1857 Sally was found to be “in a delicate condition” and young George left Addison to join his older sister, Martha Lavinia, and her husband, William Monroe Burtt, who owned an iron foundry in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Thorne’s 785-mile journey from Addison to Kalamazoo was not as remarkable as it might seem. Rail service from Detroit to Kalamazoo had existed since 1850, and members of the Thorn family appear to have made the journey with some frequency. George’s mother Sarah was in Kalamazoo with her son Julius, presumably visiting Martha, when she died of unknown causes on 18 July 1854. Julius died during that visit as well. Both are buried in Kalamazoo’s Mountain Home Cemetery, and Sarah’s name is also on the Thorn family monument in Addison’s Grand View Cemetery.
Sally Sprigg’s child was born in Addison on 3 December 1857. Lest there be any question as to his paternity, she named him George Robinson Thorne. Young George and his mother lived with her parents in Addison, where Sally supplemented the family’s income by peddling corsets.
On 2 September 1863, the elder George Robinson Thorne married Ellen Maria Cobb in Kalamazoo. Ellen’s father, Merritt D. Cobb, was originally from Connecticut but had settled in Kalamazoo by 1840, and appears to have had multiple occupations. In 1850 he was employed as the local postman, while the 1860 Census lists his occupation as “Gone to Pike’s Peak”. The Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in Colorado had run its course by 1861, so Merritt had likely returned to his family by the time of Ellen’s marriage.
On 21 October 1863, seven weeks after his marriage, George Robinson Thorne enlisted in St. Louis as a Second Lieutenant in the 2nd Missouri Light Artillery. Biographical accounts suggest that he was motivated by patriotic fervor, however, the war was well into its third year and it would have been easier to enlist from Kalamazoo. In going to St. Louis Thorne may have been leveraging an acquaintance with someone in a position to offer him a commission - possibly the commanding officer of the 2nd Missouri Light Artillery, Colonel Nelson D. Cole. Serving initially as a recruiting officer in Jefferson City, Thorne was appointed regimental quartermaster on 8 January 1864 and promoted to First Lieutenant on 22 March 1864. His military service in Missouri does not appear to have included combat.
In June of 1865, Thorne was sent on detached service with eight batteries of the 2nd Missouri Light Artillery to Omaha, Nebraska, where Colonel Nelson D. Cole commanded the right column of the Powder River Expedition against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho raiding along the Bozeman Trail in Montana and Dakota Territory. The expedition, commanded by Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor and guided by famed frontiersman Jim Bridger, was essentially an attempt at genocide, under orders to “attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age.” 1
In this final phase of his military career, Thorne experienced not only combat but a disastrous combination of bad weather and logistical mishaps that ultimately reduced the 1,400-man column to surviving on raw horse meat. Mustered out at Benton, Missouri on 25 August 1865, Thorne’s performance in the unsuccessful campaign earned him praise, with Colonel Cole noting in his report to General Grant on 10 February 1867:
Lieutenant Thorne, my quartermaster, is entitled to much credit for industry displayed in the excessively hurried organization of the trains for the expedition, as well as for their management during the arduous campaign of months under the most trying circumstances.2
Thorne’s obituary would later exaggerate his military experience, stating that he served throughout the war with the rank of major.
On leaving the Army, Thorne left Kalamazoo for Chicago where he opened a grocery store with his father-in-law, Merritt D. Cobb. The 1866 edition of Edward’s Annual Director lists George R. Thorne of the firm Cobb & Thorn residing at 148 North Dearborn Street. Also boarding at 148 North Dearborn Street were Merritt D. Cobb and his son Nathan M. Cobb, of Cobb & Thorne.3 By 1870 three of Hallett Thorn’s sons were living in Chicago, with William working as a wholesale liquor merchant for a firm known as Carroll & Thorn, and James Frost Thorn (known as “Frost”) operating a dry goods store, Thorn & Cruttenden.
In 1871 George R. Thorne and his father-in-law sold their grocery business.
The terms of the sale are unknown, as is the reason for Thorne’s trip “south”, but the move was timely. On 8 October 1871, the Great Chicago Fire ravaged the city, destroying 126 North Clark Street and all traces of Cobb & Thorne.
On 22 February 1872 Merritt Cobb’s second daughter Elizabeth, known as “Libby”, married a traveling salesman, Aaron Montgomery Ward. Born in Chatham, New Jersey in 1843, Ward’s father Sylvester had relocated to Berrien, Michigan (some 60 miles southwest of Kalamazoo) by 1860. Ward was a man with a vision - buying goods wholesale and selling them through the mail rather than conventional retail stores. The initial inventory with which he planned to start his business had been destroyed in the Chicago Fire. Thorne, presumably looking for a new venture, went into partnership with his brother-in-law, putting up either $500 or $800 (accounts vary) to launch Montgomery Ward & Co.
Again, the timing was propitious. In 1867 the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, known as the Grange, had been founded as an agricultural fraternity with the intent of improving agricultural practices in rural communities and lobbying for the regulation of railroad and grain company rates. Merritt Cobb’s younger brother, Jerome Thompson Cobb of Schoolcraft, Michigan, was the Secretary of the Michigan State Grange and editor of its publication The Grange Visitor. His influence probably secured the appointment of Montgomery Ward & Co. as the official purchasing agent of the Illinois State Grange in 1872. That relationship and ensuing affiliations with other State Granges allowed Ward and Thorne access to membership lists and thus under-served rural markets across the country. The two entrepreneurs advertised the association on the cover of their catalogs, listing Montgomery Ward & Co. as the “original wholesale grange supply house”. On 8 November 1873, the Chicago Tribune ran a column titled “Grangers Beware!” claiming that Ward and his company were swindlers. Ward immediately initiated a libel suit seeking $20,000 in damages and, on 24 December, the Tribune ran a retraction stating:
“The article was based on what was supposed to be correct information, but a thorough investigation by this office satisfies us that the article was grossly unjust, and not warranted by the real facts. The firm of Montgomery, Ward & Co. is a bona fide firm, composed of respectable persons, and doing a perfectly legitimate business in a perfectly legitimate manner.” 4
To overcome inherent consumer skepticism of goods bought sight unseen, Ward offered his famous pledge “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” as well as an installment plan enabling families of limited means to purchase items that were otherwise unaffordable. The business was stunningly successful. By 1888 sales exceeded $1,000,000 and, by 1913, surpassed $49,000,000. In the 1920s Montgomery Ward & Co. opened their own retail stores and marketed a line of kit houses known as Wardway Homes.
Thorne served as Vice President of Montgomery Ward & Co. until 1905 when, at the respective ages of 68 and 62, he and Ward passed control of the company to Thorne’s five sons. Three would serve as the company’s President and two as Vice Presidents. Thorne devoted his later years to international travel. An avid golfer, he was also a founder and longtime President of Chicago’s Midlothian Country Club. George Robinson Thorne died on 24 September 1918 and is buried in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum.
Sally Sprigg, the mother of George’s first child, married a railroad agent, Lewis F. Bates, in 1875. She was 38 years old, his second wife, and the marriage does not appear to have included her 18-year-old son. The 1880 Census lists Lewis and Sally Bates living on Webster Street in East Boston, while George was in Addison with his grandfather, William Sprigg, and his unmarried aunt Libbie. While never acknowledged by his father, the younger George Robinson Thorne probably received a stipend enabling him to lead a comfortable life as a farmer, horse breeder, President of the Champlain Trotting Association, and garrulous presence at the Stevens House hotel in Vergennes. On at least two occasions in the 1890s, young George and his wife Fannie visited Chicago to buy livestock. Did father and son ever actually meet? Young George died in Vergennes on 3 January 1936 and is buried there with his wife in Prospect Cemetery. The obituary made no mention of his father.
Charles Griffin Coutant, The History of Wyoming From the Earliest Known Discoveries (Laramie, Chaplin, Spafford & Mathison, Printers, 1899) 495.
United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 48, 366-379
Edwards’ Annual Director to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business, Business Firms, etc., etc., in the City of Chicago for 1866 (Chicago, Edwards, Greenough & Deved, 1866) unpaginated.
The Chicago Tribune, 24 December 1873 p. 5
Once again, a great story and well told! I needed an org chart to follow the who’s who… and just when I was wondering what ever happened to dear Sally and son George, you wrapped it up nicely with a bow! Bravo!