Women Shop Owners and Retail Workers
Essex, Lafayette, Union, and Central Streets Business District
As Salem became an industrialized city in the mid-1800s, dozens
of shops sprang up in Salem’s business district — some
of them following in the tradition of Salem’s Cent Shops (see
S46) and many of them owned by women. City
directories from the mid- to late-1800s provide wonderfully illustrated
advertisements including those for Miss Pauline Symonds, “Fashionable
Milliner”; Miss J. M. Holbrook, “French Milliner”;
Mrs. A. Phillips, “Books, Stationery, Periodicals, Picture
frames, engravings, etc.”; (she also ran an “extensive
circulating library, the use of which is offered to the public at
the low price of two cents per day, or ten cents per week”);
Mrs. Lizzie Hanson, “music teacher”; Mrs. E. Saroni, “manufacturer
and dealer in boys’ suits & overcoats and misses’
outside garments”; Mary A. Bush, “laces and fancy goods,
linen collars & cuffs & gloves”; Mary L. McGahan, “dealer
in dry and fancy goods, fruit, confectionary, ice cream, etc.”;
Ann R. Bray, “dealer in foreign and domestic dry goods, also
piano fortes”; Miss A. E. Lane, “fashionable cloak and
dress maker”; and Miss Mary E. Connell, “dealer in sewing
machines and sewing machine findings.”86
Although we know next to nothing about their lives, these and other
women were clearly an integral part of Salem’s nineteenth-century
business community.
Notes
86. 1866 Salem city directory, 8-59.
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