Our History

Early Years

James M. McDonald, Sr. was born July 20, 1881 in Kingston, Missouri. He was the next to youngest in a family of five sons who were destined to play an important part in the development of a retail chain store.

Daniel G. McDonald, J.M.’s father, was one of the first men in the chain store business. In Hamilton, Missouri, where the family moved soon after J.M.’s birth, Daniel operated the Cash-McDonald Store. This store was one of a chain of ten stores in Missouri known as the Cash-Cowgill Company.

It was in this store that young J.M. got his first taste of the mercantile business. It was his responsibility to do all the odd jobs around the store such as sweeping, dusting, and washing windows. In those days, work shoes came packed by the dozen and were kept under tables. Each week, J.M. had to take all the boots out of their boxes, rub the dust off, and replace them.

But even in those days, J.M. wasn’t just dusting boots. While his hands were busy, his eyes and ears were occupied too – observing how the clerks handled people and storing impressions of good merchandising.

The next step was waiting on customers when other people in the store were busy. While still too small to see over the counter, J.M. managed to wait on trade by kicking a box around to stand on. Many a customer stopping at an apparently deserted counter was surprised to find a little red-head popping up in front of them with a pleasant, “May I help you?”

McDonalds Stores

Just prior to the turn of the century, J.M returned to Kingston where he and three of his older brothers opened a dry goods and grocery store known as “McDonalds”. He was responsible for buying all the groceries while helping to buy dry goods and shoes. The McDonald brothers operated their store in Kingston for several years. During this period they bought a shoe store in Maryville, Missouri. After operating them separately for some time, they moved the shoe stock to Kingston. In 1902, having outgrown Kingston, a community of only a few hundred people, the McDonald boys moved their store to Council Grove, Kansas. Two years later, the brothers traded this store for a farm in southwest Missouri.

In April, 1905, following his calling, J.M. went to Kemmerer, Wyoming to assist J.C. Penney in operating his first store. Neither dreamed that they were launching what was to become a chain of more than 1,700 stores in the 1950’s.

J. C. Penney

The young men had known each other all of their lives, having grown up only a block apart in Hamilton, Missouri. Although James C. Penney was six years older than James M. McDonald and had gone to school with the older McDonald boys, J.M. had been a frequent visitor in the Penney home, drawn by Pearl, a sister who was his age. Their mothers were close friends and visited each other regularly. Their fathers were both members of the Hamilton school board as well as political contemporaries.

After about six months in Kemmerer, J.M. went to Spokane, Washington. His brothers had gone there and asked him to join them in a department store venture. In the ensuing years, he added to his experience of merchandising and buying and made a success of whatever he undertook.

Marriage and Family

On September 1, 1911, J.M. went back with J.C. Penney as an assistant manager in their 25th store in Pendleton, Oregon. Prior to this, while in Spokane, J.M. met a young nurse, Josephine Armstrong, a graduate of Minneapolis City Hospital, who was doing private duty nursing in the various Spokane hospitals. They were married on December 10, 1910. When J.M. went to Pendleton in 1911, the couple was expecting their first child the following February, so Mrs. McDonald stayed with J.M.’s parents, who had moved to Spokane to be near their sons.

Their daughter, Eleanor, was born on February 20, 1912. Shortly thereafter, Josephine and the baby joined J.M. in Pendleton.

In the Spring of 1912, J.M. was promoted to manager of the Penney store in Moscow, Idaho. His career with J.C. Penney blossomed from there. In 1913, the Penney corporate offices were moved to New York. On April 1, 1914, J.M., his wife, and their small daughter joined the headquarters organization of the Penney Company.

1n 1914, the Penney Company consisted of 71 stores doing a business of $3,500,000. That total stands for a great deal of merchandise, considering that in those days a fairly good work shirt sold for 25 cents and the best overalls were only 83 cents.

After a few years, J.M. was made a member of the Board of Directors of the J.C. Penney Company and put in sole charge of the buying. In four years (1918), the company business grew to $21,338,000. In January, 1921, J.M. was made a vice president of the company and was put in charge of merchandising as well as new store acquisitions. The years he headed those departments, until his retirement in 1929, represented one of the firm’s best eras. In his less than a decade as Vice President, the number of stores had grown from 312 to 1,395.

Retail v. Manufacturing

One of J.C. Penney’s and J.M. McDonald’s few disagreements came over the question of whether the company should manufacture its own merchandise. One of Mr. Penney’s friends had sold him on the idea of doing his own manufacturing while J.M. maintained that they could buy merchandise cheaper that they could manufacture it and that the firm should stay strictly in the retail business.

For the most part, J.M. managed to keep the company out of the manufacturing business. However, they did establish a corset factory in Cortland, New York. Although he still wasn’t much impressed by the manufacturing idea, it was J.M.’s responsibility to get the financing and build the factory.

The Crescent Corset Company was built and employed up to 1,000 people in Cortland. Penney’s made money on it because J.M. insisted that it be kept in full operation for 50 weeks per year.

In the early 1950’s, the J.C. Penney Company sold the corset plant validating that J.M. was right when he advised against a manufacturing plant in the first place.

Brown-McDonald

For the next seven years after his retirement, J.M. maintained his own office in New York City doing consulting work with manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers – almost everyone in the business of making and selling soft goods – in addition to looking after his own interests. During this time, he acted as merchandise counselor and business advisor for many of the leading national corporations.

During the mid 1930’s, J.M. became acquainted with Ebden Brown of the Brown-Ekberg Company. This was a company that came into being in Holdrege, Nebraska in September, 1915. The company grew slowly until the early 1930’s when it was found that the firm over-expanded in relation to available capital. Drought conditions in the Midwest and a general financial depression throughout the nation tended to make matters worse. The officers concluded that their only recourse was to seek additional capital.

It was at this time, in 1934, that Ebden Brown made a fateful buying trip to New York and had a luncheon with J.M. McDonald. By buying the interest of Harry Ekberg, who wished to sell due to ill health, J.M. obtained controlling stock of the company, which then became known as Brown-McDonald. With renewed financial vigor, the Brown-McDonald Company opened four new stores in the next three years.

D.G. McDonald, J.M.’s brother, headed the company from 1937 until his death in 1947. During that 10 year period, the company continued to expand steadily, adding 18 new units for a total of 40 stores. In 1947, J.M. succeeded his brother as president of the company. Still, he retained his residence in Cortland, New York, where he operated one of the largest and best known purebred Guernsey farms in the united states.

In May, 1948, at the annual meeting, J.M. requested the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors, in order that he might devote more time to his other interests. J.M. McDonald, Jr. was elected, at the age of 27, as President of the firm.

Farming

In the mid 1920’s, J.M. became interested in farming. At the time, he was living in New Rochelle, New York. A few years earlier, as mentioned, J.M. had gone to Cortland to build and open the Crescent Corset Company owned by the J.C. Penney Company. He had always liked the town and surrounding area, so he decided to look in Cortland for a suitable farm. Upon arriving in Cortland, he learned that just a few days before, a man had been killed by a falling tree on a nearby farm and the farm was now for sale. J.M. liked this farm better than any he had seen previously, so he purchased the farm, cattle, horses, and equipment. The place was known as the Old Bean Farm.

J.M. decided to build a small herd of purebred Guernsey. The primary purpose behind his decision was his desire to field better stock for the advancement of the Guernsey breed and to supply better foundation animals for breeders.

In the relatively short period of 23 years, the herd had grown until its influence and prominence in the breed had reached heights inconceivable in the early days. Its influence had been prominent in leading herds from coast to coast. Breeders everywhere knew of the accomplishments of this great herd in the show ring, in the sales ring, and in their own herds.

Philanthropy

Upon his death, Mr. McDonald bequeathed the nucleus of the McDonald Farms herd of 365 head to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, to be maintained for a long-time breeding research program. About 1,700 acres of farmland and all the equipment were also included. It is a tribute to J.M.’s wisdom and foresight to allow his outstanding work to continue to improve and advance the Guernsey breed.

J.M. McDonald’s interest in improvement was not limited to livestock. He was actively engaged in helping young people improve themselves. For more than a quarter century, J.M. was one of the ‘guardian angels’ of the School of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, in his native Missouri.

School of the Ozarks

It was the work which the School of the Ozarks was, and is, doing with young people that impressed J.M. McDonald. The aim of the school is to provide education for boys and girls who would otherwise be denied it. No student is admitted if he can pay his tuition elsewhere. The students do not receive merely a formal education, they pay their tuition, room and board, and receive spending money by working in the school.

J.M.’s first major project was to rebuild the school museum. In 1947, he replaced a ramshackle old shed with an up to date machine shop to repair equipment. His largest contribution to the school was a new hospital, completed, in May 1951, and dedicated to the memory of his wife, Josephine Armstrong McDonald, who died in 1945. Constructed of native stone, the hospital was built principally by the students, who also quarried the stone.

When J.M. visited the school, he always had time to speak to the youngsters, to be interested in the problems at hand, to know all the members of the staff, and to go out of his way to see people he might help.

The J.M. McDonald Foundation, Inc. is Formed

In the spring of 1952, J.M. established the J.M. McDonald Foundation, Inc. in order to make sure his charitable activities would continue. This is a trust whose income is to be used as donations to deserving charities.

Primary interests of the Foundation are education, humanities, health, and a variety of social and human services.

More than 70 years after its inception, the J.M. McDonald Foundation, Inc. has grown many times over and is active in awarding grants primarily in upstate New York. Thanks to the foresight of J.M. McDonald, Sr., the Foundation continues the charitable example he modeled years ago.

*Excerpts of this summary were taken with permission from “The J.M. McDonald Story” by Richard G. Price and Beth Bohling as it appeared in the Guernsey Breeders Journal.*