A peddler is selling his wares on Greenwoods Road just past the entrance to Westside in this 1896 postcard photograph taken by Marie Kendall. He must have been well-known to townsfolk for on the back of the photograph he is referred to as ìLouie, the Grand Army man.î Look closely and you will see that the two women on the left are holding pairs of shoes, probably acquired by the peddler from a small leather company. In the days before rapid transportation, Yankee peddlers had become an effective distribution system for companies that paid them to sell their goods. This was how thousands of Connecticut wooden shelf clocks, part of the stock-in-trade for peddlers, found their way to the frontier. It was said that every cabin, even if it had no furniture, was sure to have a Connecticut shelf clock, an Eli Terry invention, and the first machine in the world to be mass produced with interchangeable parts.

—Ann Havemeyer

Photo copyright Norfolk Historical Society.