When was john nordstrom born

Nordstrom moved westward through Iowa, Colorado, California, and Washington, performing such back-breaking work as logging, coal mining, gold and silver mining, loading railroad ties, and carting bricks.

In , he settled in Arlington, Washington, about 50 miles north of Seattle. Nordstrom was one of many Swedish immigrants in the town. He started a potato farm on 50 acres of land and began courting a Swedish woman named Hilda Carlson. A year later, the Seattle Port-Intelligencer reported that gold had been found in the Yukon territory. Like many West Coast residents, Nordstrom traveled north to seek his fortune. He took a coal freighter to Port Valdez, Alaska, and then traveled 1, miles on horse and on foot to Dawson in the heart of the gold fields.

Accustomed to hard work, Nordstrom toiled in the gold fields for two years before striking pay dirt. When another miner challenged his claim, Nordstrom sold his share to the other miner rather than fight him in a corrupt arbitration process. Nordstrom, who had changed his given name to John, married Hilda Carlson in Nordstrom wanted to invest his earnings in a business. A Klondike friend, Carl F. Wallin, worked as a shoemaker and suggested that he and Nordstrom open a shoe store.

Nordstrom knew nothing about selling shoes, as he recalled in his memoir, "Opening day, we had not had a customer by noon, so my partner went to lunch. He had not been gone but a few minutes when our first customer, a woman, came in for a pair of shoes she had seen in the window. I was nervous and could not find the style she had picked out in our stock. I was just about ready to give up when I decided to try on the pair from the window, the only pair we had of that style.

The partners relied on traveling salesmen to stock the store. At first, they bought only medium widths. But they soon realized that their Swedish customers required larger sizes, and they began keeping wider widths in stock. Little did they know at the time, the successor to their tiny store would one day have a national reputation for its extensive inventory.

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