The  heritage of Vermilion County

(This is a article from an earlier edition of the Heritage magazine)

Grab-It-Here the grocery giant that grew with Vermilion County

   It's a strange feeling, sitting in and office on Factory Street in Danville, Illinois, and talking to Ernest Paxton. You remember that it was his father who put $185 into a little grocery store just 62 years ago. (The article was written in 1966.) Then you look at the warehouse and the offices. You smell the bread and cakes coming out of the Grab-It-Here ovens, and you realize that Ernie Paxton is an American success story, Vermilion County style.
   C. Sherman Paxton, the father, came to Illinois from Kentucky at the turn of the century, and found work driving a mule on the night shift at Kelly Mine No. 3.  On earnings of $2.50 a day, savings for his own business grew slowly. But he cut down by walking five and a half miles to an from work, eleven miles a day, and saved 20 cents carfare.
  When his hoard reached $185, Paxton rented a Georgetown store for $5 a month, settled his family in rooms at the rear, and stokes his shelves with "two cans of this and three packages of that" from a Danville wholesaler.
   His friends, the miners, patronized the store but profits were slim. All sales were credit. Deliveries were made by Paxton or his wife in their three year old son's wagon. It was a hard life, starting at 5 AM to take orders from miners whose car left at 5:30.
   Paxton closed his store during a long coal strike and went home to Kentucky.  But when the strike ended, he came back and began in a location that rented for $13 a month. He managed enough profit to bargain for a $2500 brick storeroom, and added a line of hardware, shoes, and dry goods.
   Then disaster threatened, the road from Georgetown to Danville was paved, tempting many Georgetown residents to do their shopping in the big city. Paxton dropped his sidelines, and gave full attention to his grocery stocks.
   The years after World War I were bad for Illinois, and for the infant grocery venture. The store was doing $100,00 in business a year, but most of it was on credit. Bad debts ran into the thousands. As late as 1941, $37,000 in uncollected bills were still on the company books, kept only as souvenirs.
   The years of the early 1920s were black with unemployment and strikes. They were to spell ruin for hundreds of other businesses that sold on credit. But C. S. Paxton shifted to suit the times, and opened an all cash store. The year was 1919 and his son Ernest was made manager.
   The first day the words "Grab It Here" were scrawled on the window to invite customers. Some townsfolk, indignant at the informality of the message, demanded that it be washed off. But the name stuck, and Grab-It-Here was on its way to becoming one of the Midwest's best-known trademarks.
   There were two stores now, the original run by C. S. Paxton, and the cash-and-carry unit known as the Grab-It-Here Store. Around 1933 with many Grab-It cash stores in operation, the credit store was closed.
   When the nation's banks closed the Paxtons knew they needed customers, cash or no cash. So they offered to cash payroll checks, giving out tokens that were used to pay farmers for produce, and which were accepted for Grab-It-Here goods. The practice kept old friends and made new ones.
     In 1966 there were 24 Grab-It-Here stores in Illinois, and eleven in Indiana. They stretched north to Kentland, Indiana, and south to Tuscola, Illinois. The chain was still a family concern.  C. S. passed away in 1950.  By the late 1900s Grab-It-Here Stores were just a memory.  One of Vermilion County's own giants had faded from the landscape.

The Heritage of Vermilion County is published quarterly by the Vermilion County  Museum Society    Subscriptions available through Society membership