In 1870, Charles Frederick Abrahamson, a Swedish immigrant, arrived in Jamestown, New York, and went to work in the dry goods store of Mr. DeForest Weld. Advancing from cash boy to clerk, he joined a wholesale dry goods firm in New York City in 1882. Returning to Jamestown in 1887, he became a junior partner in Felch, Read and Co.

 In 1894, he and Mr. John Ahlstrom formed a partnership and took over the Felch & Read store, located at 207 North Main Street. Mr. Abrahamson soon became the sole proprietor of the business. Mr. Abrahamson apparently became friends with the Bigelow family in New York City, for in 1900 Reuben W. Bigelow moved his family to Jamestown and formed a partnership with Mr. Abrahamson, creating the Abrahamson-Bigelow Company. 1894 was always used as the date from which anniversaries were marked.

 Six years after they formed this partnership -- which was highly successful -- the pair bought out an old carriage works next to the old First Presbyterian Church on West Third Street and had a six-story brick building constructed for their booming business. Later, the church was razed and a new one built on 5th Street; that site was used to build the nine-story Hotel Jamestown; with Bigelow's it formed the core of downtown Jamestown.

 Unfortunately, Mr. Abrahamson died at the age of 50 in 1908, and Reuben Bigelow took over the business. In Mr. Abrahamson's memory, the name of the company was never changed throughout its existence, even though none of the Abrahamsons had anything to do with the store after his death.

 Reuben Bigelow soon became ill, and in 1912 he asked his brother Franklin to move to Jamestown to take over the business. Franklin, then a protege of the legendary F. W. Woolworth, moved to Jamestown to take over just before Reuben died. In 1913, Franklin bought out Reuben's share of the business, and his family ran the store for the next 69 years.

 The store, located at 114-120 West Third Street near the heart of downtown Jamestown, became known locally as Bigelow's Department Store, and flourished until the depression. At that point in time, all five of Franklin's children, and their children of working age, worked in the store to get it through hard times. Later, the store began to expand and purchased both extra land for expansion and other buildings in the downtown Jamestown area. Franklin died in 1934, but by that time his children were running the store.

 All five children of Franklin Bigelow were involved in the store in the tough days of the 1930s, but by the 1950s only three remained active. Fred Bigelow was the President of the company until his death in 1963, when he was replaced by his son, Frank. Robert Buchan, son of Anna Mae Bigelow Buchan, was Chairman of the Board. John B. Sewell, son of Edna Bigelow Sewell Gokey, as the advertising manager from 1948 to 1972 and also secretary of the corporation. Her second husband, George F. Gokey Jr., was the physical plant manager for the store and took an active part in maintenance and improvements.

 Will Bigelow had moved back to New Jersey, and neither he nor his children were active in store affairs other than to participate in the annual store business meeting. After the 1930s, neither the widowed Anna Mae nor her sister Irene took an active part in the store's operations.

 Bigelow's was one of two large department stores in Jamestown; the other was the smaller four-floor Nelson Brothers Department Store located on Second Street near City Hall. Jamestown had originally been a center for furniture manufacture with 104 active furniture factories in town in 1900. It later attracted businesses such as Marlin-Rockwell Ball Bearings, Blackstone appliances, Art Metal Office Furniture, Crescent Tool Manufacturing, and American Voting Machine.

 In 1950, Jamestown numbered nearly 50,000 residents, and business was good for all of the local merchants. Until 1940, Jamestown also had a very useful and handy streetcar system that served many of the neighborhoods and provided handy access to the downtown. In 1941, the pride and joy of the system, a four-way “grand union” at the corner of Third Street and Main Street, was torn up; while no one realized it at the time, this was the beginning of a downslide in downtown Jamestown's businesses.

 The high water mark for both Jamestown and Bigelow's was 1960, the year of the city's sesquicentennial. After that, things began to go downhill. Jamestown was a solidly union town, but as furniture manufacturers began to find cheaper labor in “right to work” states such as North Carolina the furniture business began to move out. Businesses also began to move out of downtowns to the coming thing of the late 1950s, strip malls. Businesses in downtown Jamestown began to suffer, and Nelson's was one of the first big casualties in 1957. Bigelow's still thrived, opening a new parking lot, buying up two more buildings, and later added a new façade to the old building to show it was still progressing (see top photo).

 The crunches began to come in the 1970s. With declining jobs in the Jamestown area, and many young people leaving a depressed job market for other areas, business began to fall off. The climax of the internal problems with Bigelow's, which was now seeing the rise of the third generation of Bigelows into the company, came in 1972 at the annual meeting. There was a clear delineation between family members who had wanted to expand since 1968 into what they saw as the coming thing -- malls -- and those convinced that staying in downtown Jamestown and relying on upgrades and improved downtown parking for their customer base would keep things going.

 Things came to a head in 1972 at the annual meeting. After a very sharp and acrimonious meeting, John Sewell and George Gokey were essentially fired, and the son-in-law of Frank Bigelow, Thomas Anderson, then vice-president of the corporation, took full charge of operations. When Bob Buchan died in 1975, Frank took over as Chairman of the Board and Tom Anderson became President.

 There were fewer and fewer Bigelows to run the store at that point in time. Frank Bigelow's son, Bill, worked at the store for a short time in 1960 but left Jamestown to pursue a career in the US Navy and wound up in Hawaii. Mary Bigelow married Tom Anderson, but only Tom worked at the store. Martha Bigelow pursued her own life elsewhere. Barbara Buchan worked at the Yodler Ski Shop as manager until her marriage to Alan Yahn in 1964; her brother, Bill Buchan, moved to Vermont. Stephen Sewell worked at the store in menial jobs from 1964 to 1968 (parking lot attendant, groundskeeper, shipping clerk and on occasion mens' department clerk) but entered the US Army for a career and eventually settled in Maryland. Neither Stuart nor Stanton Sewell were ever asked to work at the store. George and Eddie Gokey left Jamestown for Charleston, South Carolina, in 1973.

 Unfortunately, the progressives were proven to be correct. Jamestown suffered a massive blow when, after a long and protracted strike, Art Metal, the biggest employer in the Jamestown area, closed its Jamestown plant and moved to North Carolina. It was quickly followed by Crescent Tool Co., who also moved its main factory out of Jamestown. In the same time frame, new discount stores such as Hills Department Store moved into Jamestown, and with the loss of jobs and income the cheaper stores cut deeply into the Bigelow customer base. By 1980 only four furniture factories remained in Jamestown.

 Another problem surfaced when the State of New York began to install sales taxes in the late 1960s. These started at 4%, then 5%, then 7% and by the time the store collapsed in 1982 were up to 8% with local county "piggyback" add-ons permitted by the State government. Since Pennsylvania did not have a tax at that time, and never had a tax on clothing, it began to drive people to Erie or Warren for shopping.

 Even though Jamestown tried hard to put on a good face, things kept sliding downhill. In 1975, Tom Anderson was among those backing a complete redesign of downtown Jamestown. This was a move that eventually got the city a 1976 Bicentennial Award as an “All American City”. But while attractive, due to the poor layout of the new streets -- going from two lanes with curbside parking down to only one lane in places --- it also cut off nearly all access to downtown stores. With the building of new malls in Lakewood, New York (5 miles away), Warren, Pennsylvania (18 miles) and Erie, Pennsylvania (35 miles) -- all with large parking lots and good stores -- that essentially killed Bigelow's business.

 Bigelow's suffered constant hemorrhaging due to poor management decisions, a lack of available capital to replace high-quality stock, and the advent of discount stores selling the same brand names at greatly reduced prices. The parking lots went first in the early 1970s to make room for a high-rise apartment building on the northwest corner of Fourth and Lafayette; this was based on the municipal construction of a series of parking ramps, including one between Main and Cherry on Fourth Street next to the new Holiday Inn hotel. This turned out to be a mistake, as that ramp was soon condemned due to shoddy construction; even though Jamestown, like most cities in the snow belt, used huge amounts of salt in the winter for ice management, no provision was made to use salt-resistant concrete.

 As available talent moved out or went to the malls in Warren or Lakewood, and as the old work force died or moved away as well, they soon lost the one advantage they had over other stores  service provided by highly knowledgeable clerks and department heads  for cheaper and less personable young clerks and buyers in order to save money. Due to this attrition of its income, goods available shrank and shrank until few departments had a competitive or viable selection left.

 By 1982 the store was out of business; stocks had been liquidated several years earlier, and the assets sold off to various buyers. Attempts were made to revive it by a committee headed by Alan “Skip” Yawn, the son-in-law of Bob Buchan and a successful businessman in his own right. They also tried to affiliate with the Adam, Meldrum and Anderson Department Store chain out of Buffalo, but all this came to naught. Several attempts were made to use the buildings for shops or community centers, but all of these also came to no avail.

 As of 2000, Jamestown is a “rust belt” city of less than 32,000 people with no real downtown business area to speak of. As a result, with some 900 homes either abandoned or up for sale in 2001, the city is not doing well and is trying to manage with more than its share of social problems. Finally, in 2001 the city council purchased the main store for use as a community center. Modifications to the building included knocking down both the two-story wooden annex and four-story brick annex for parking, and adding rooms and plumbing inside on the upper floors.  Opening in September 2002, Bigelow's Department Store has now been converted to provide two floors for YWCA community programs and four floors of low-income "need based" housing for at-risk people such as single mothers.

     "According to most family records that I can find, Reuben W. Bigelow and Mr. Abrahamson formed a partnership in 1893 to create the Abrahamson-Bigelow Company, which was the backing of a department store in Jamestown, New York. Reuben’s brother Franklin joined him after the turn of the century, and by 1910 Mr. Abrahamson had either died or been bought out by the brothers."

see Bigelow Department Store page 3.
Thanks to  Steve Sewell AMPSOne@aol.com from Aberdeen, Maryland for this info.

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