This is a picture of my grandmother’s Uncle Tony’s store in Custar, Ohio. Uncle Tony owned the store, and several people in the family worked there. He started the store from a little butcher’s shop, and grew it into more of a general store/supermarket. My grandmother and her six siblings worked there from the age of 10, stocking shelves and sweeping, until they were old enough to work the cash registers at age 12. At the time, they were paid 50 cents an hour, which my grandmother says was very generous for the time. She often mentions Tony’s generosity, and says he had an option for people to pay weekly or monthly if they weren’t able to pay at that very moment. It was and is a very rural community, and according to my dad, oftentimes families struggled to survive and couldn’t afford to pay Tony, but he was a “prince of a guy, very kind and generous.” Tony started the store in his late twenties, and worked there until the time he died at 75. The building still stands, but the story is no more. Though I don’t know much about my family’s history vis a vis immigration, I do know that that side of my family has been in the same part of Ohio since around 1860, and my parents live only about 20 minutes from Custar today. 

– Sarah W

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more