Philip, Isaac, Lehman, Jacob, David, Sam, and Alexander Sanger established their wholesale and retail dry goods firm in 1857. Isaac opened the first store in McKinney, Texas, and was joined by Lehman in 1859 and by Philip in 1860. Each of the brothers ran a store and as more brothers joined the business, more stores were added. The brothers opened stores in towns along the Houston and Central Texas Railroad, eventually owning stores in Dallas, Decatur, Waco, Bryan, Hearn, Millican, Calvert, Bremond, Kosse, Groesbeck, Corsicana, and Sherman. In 1868, the firm became the first Texas business to open a buying office in New York, allowing them to obtain a wider selection of stock. The brothers opened a wholesale division in 1874, selling goods to outlying retailers. In response to the Panic of 1873, the firm consolidated, closing stores in numerous locations, such as Bryan, Bremond, and Corsicana. By 1891 the firm ran on a departmental system, extended credit, offered free home delivery, established an advertising department, ran an Employee Savings and Loan Association, published the Sanger Brothers’ Monthly Magazine, and sold through mail order.
By the turn of the 19th century, Sanger Brothers began to decline due to a lack of aggressive leadership. By 1925 all of the Sanger brothers had died, and the company reorganized under Philip Sanger’s son-in-law Clarence Linz. Stifel, Nicholaus, and Company, a St. Louis firm, purchased Sanger Brothers in 1926. In 1951, Federated Department Stores acquired Sanger Brothers and A. Harris Co. and reorganized the companies under the name Sanger-Harris. The company retained the Sanger name until 1987 when Federated Department Stores absorbed it into Foley’s Department Store.
Source: Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. Sanger Brothers, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/ijsqj.html (accessed July 28, 2010).
From the guide to the Sanger Brothers Department Store Records 93-348., 1869-1966, 1989, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)
