Fancy Goods: Mrs. Young's Gift Shop

Missing Puzzle Pieces

Fancy Goods

In genealogy, we try to make sure that we have every piece of evidence researched to the best of our ability. When my late mother gave me this pamphlet (1908-1958) on the family business, I was very surprised. How had I not seen this before? I read it out loud to her hoping to get her reaction on what was said. She just kept saying. "That's right!". I tucked in into my bag so she wouldn't discard it as she was prone to do.

I am still not sure who wrote this or if my mother did the vehicle drawings. They do look like her "style" of drawing. 

I assumed that the Mrs. Young mentioned was the woman who was my grandmother's friend so I went looking for that woman's granddaughter whose name I knew. I found her and she said that her grandmother never had a gift shop. So that puzzle piece went unsolved until this month. Using Providence City Directories, I found this gift "store" in Providence. At least I had now had a name to research.

Working backwards in time, I found that this gift store was once at another location. This clip that says Thayer is an earlier date of 1931. She must have done well in business to move from Thayer to Angell St. 

Women of this time who lived in that area, near Brown University,  frequented gift shops (like we go to HomeGoods today) to buy items to decorate their homes. They also sold toys and candy and I remember visiting some of them with my grandmother when I stayed with her.  

What my grandfather did was pick up items to be drycleaned, take them to the main plant in Pawcatuck/Westerly and then take them back to Mrs. Young for the ladies to pick them up. It must have been a terrible commute in the winter. That's why the cleaning and laundry business had drivers who did that in the 1940 and 1950s. 

Not long after they married, my grandparents (and great grandparents, too) moved from Westerly to the Providence/Cranston area.