Who are Sears and Roebuck?

Answer 1

sears roebuck and co Chicago illnois, red sleeping bag stock no 8318, no 2527, from 1923 what is it worth

Answer 2

Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck were the founders of the American chain of department stores, Sears, Roebuck and Company, in the late 19th century. Richard Sears learned telegraphy and got a job with the railroad, eventually becoming a station agent. A shipment of pocket watches from Chicago was refused by the purchaser. Sears, who was 23, bought the shipment himself and sold them to other station agents along the railroad line. In six months he had netted $5,000 and felt so confident that he founded the R.W. Sears Watch Company.

In 1887 Sears moved his company from Minneapolis to Chicago and hired watch repairman Alvah Curtis Roebuck to repair any watches being returned. Roebuck was Sears's first employee, and he later became co-founder in 1893 of Sears, Roebuck and Company when Sears was just 30 years old. Roebuck left the company a few years later. The first Sears catalog offered only watches and was published the year the company was founded. By 1897, men and women's clothing, bicycles and other household goods were added. Sears retired at age 44.

The 500-page catalog was sent to some 300,000 homes. In 1908 Sears began to sell mail order homes through the catalogs which was quite an innovation. Sears retired that year at 44 and died in 1914 at the young age of 51.

In 1895, Roebuck asked Sears to buy him out for about $20,000. Later when asked about his ex-partner's great wealth, and his own modest wealth he replied: "He's dead. Me, I never felt better." Roebuck later served as president of Emerson Typewriter Company where he invented an improved typewriter. After the Stock Market crash in1929 he returned to Chicago and by 1933, he had rejoined Sears, Roebuck and Co., where he largely devoted his time to compiling a history of the company he helped found. He died in 1948 at the age of 84.