Peddler’s Cart | Stores | Scrap Yard | Tobacco
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 />  /> Before towns had many stores, Southerners often depended on peddlers who roamed the South from the mid~nineteenth through early twentieth centuries. Working from a wagon or sometimes just a backpack, peddlers went door to door, collecting scraps and selling things people needed for their homes.
 />  /> David Lebovitz left Lithuania in 1889 as an eighteen-year-old, landing in Baltimore with eight dollars in his pocket and not knowing English. The Baltimore Bargain House gave him credit to purchase tinware, and with his last sixty cents he bought a train ticket to go as far as he could go. For three years he peddled, covering from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania. He would go out on weekdays, returning for the weekend with cash to buy more merchandise. In 1892 a farmer in Gastonia let Lebovitz store merchandise in his barn while he traveled to Baltimore to get more goods. Soon Lebovitz opened a store in Gastonia under his shortened name, Lebo’s. By 1910 the store had doubled in size, and thirteen years later he owned three stores and was a stockholder in textile mills. Lebo’s grew into a chain of five department stores. |
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