Duane Bozarth wrote:
TURTLE wrote:
...

Well can you substantiate that everything you read on the internet is true ?


No, obviously. But I can at least corroborate the basics of the
establisment of Sears/Roebuck w/ past knowledge obtained from
grandparents who were around at the time amongst other ways.

There's no indication that virtually any of the "history" you posted had
any basis in fact.

I doubt you can corroborate anything from your
grandparents. Old enough to know anything in 1990
would mean being born in 1880 or earlier so they
would be at least 125 years old? Hard to
corroborate anything from dead people. My father
worked for Sears for a while in the 20's or 30's,
and can't corroborate anything either. I can
remember stuff he told, but that isn't
corroboration since corroborate means to confirm
and that means question and answer. My father
isn't answering anything and neither are your
grandparents if they were around at the time Sears
was established.

Oral histories are notoriously inaccurate. So you
generally need oral histories from from a lot of
unrelated people to get anything that approaches
accurate. Just look at Turtles interpretation of
the history of Sears. His family probably all
repeats the same distorted view. You listen to an
often repeated message when you are young and it
is very hard to break from that when you are
mature, even if the message is internally
inconsistent with what you know.

As for the Sears site, publishing lies about the
history of the store, which can easily be check by
a historian examining newspaper clippings and
other data, would be remarkably stupid. There
would be no upside, only downside. Besides Sears
has a right to be proud of its early retail history.