HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER

The Distributors





At one time, flour was obtained directly from the local grist mill by the housewife that needed flour daily for her baking needs. Distributors were only a late 19th century addition to the everyday life of America. The only listings in the 1878 Maryland Directory for Salisbury are for Dry Goods, General Merchandise and Groceries & Provisions. There is no mention of a distributor of any kind. By 1891, along with the flour, feed and grist mills of James K. Disharoon, Thomas Humphreys and G. W. White, there was one wholesale grocer listed and that was B. L. Gillis & Son.


By 1899, the City Directory listed two distributors, B. L. Gillis was still doing business on Dock St. (now Market St.) and H. S. Todd had started a distributing business on Main St. near the Main St. bridge. Todd was still around through the 1960’s, but only had tobacco products and candy.


1907 had four distributors in its listings along with 35 retail grocers. The distributors were all located near the Fulton Siding station of the railroad. The station master’s house can still be seen there at the corner of Rt. 50 and Mill St. The staple of the day was flour and it was brought in packaged in 100 lb. bags. Many of these were broken down into smaller packaging for the retail grocers to sell. The large distributors were B. L. Gillis & Son on Dock St., Wm. E. Sheppard & Co. on Main St. (the building is still there on the NE side of the river), Turner Bros. on Main St. (currently the Port Exchange Building) and G. E. Rounds on W. Church St. (he sold only fruits and produce)


A new distributor opened up in 1911 on Mill St. next to the Farmers and Planters Co. This was the firm of T. L. Ruark & Co. The building was purchased by the R. C. Holloway Co. in 1975. It is still there operating as the R. C. Holloway Co. They are warehouse distributors for automotive, heavy duty, marine and industrial products. So the 100-year-old building is still in the distribution business.


By 1921, Doody Bros. came on the scene to give competition to the established firms of Ruark, Sheppard and the Turners. The emergence of the “super market” put a damper on the operations of many of the local grocery stores that seemed to dot every corner in Salisbury. They had their own distribution systems and had little need for the packaged flour or any of the other grocery items of the local distributors.


Like everything else, the distribution systems today dwarf anything that could have been imagined 100 years ago. The systems supplying the likes of Wal-Mart and McDonalds entail hundreds of trucks on the highways at any given moment. But, years ago, the trains coming into Fulton Siding with two box cars full of flour for the local distributors were a weekly occurrence.