A Penney Worth a Lot

Most of you know about the J.C. Penney chain of stores. But do you know who J.C. Penney was? Perhaps only a few of you have ever been to his hometown of Hamilton, Missouri. And probably none of you have played basketball in the Penney High School in Hamilton as I did as a high school student. 

Penney’s Early Life

Since I received more-than-expected responses to the blog post I made on my birthday last month, the post in which I wrote about being a Missouri farmboy, let me introduce you to another northwest Missouri farmboy, a Penney who came to be worth a lot.

James Cash Penney was born 145 years ago (on September 16, 1875) on a farm two miles east of Hamilton, Missouri, about 75 miles mostly south of Grant City, my hometown, and a long drive home after a night basketball game.

J.C.’s father was a farmer—and an unpaid Primitive Baptist preacher. Even though the Penney farm was a fairly large one, the family was rather challenged financially, and J.C. started earning his own money at an early age—raising pigs (as I did) and watermelons (which I certainly never did.)

Penney’s Successful Life

Since he was financially unable to go to college, J.C. Penney worked locally for a while then moved to Colorado. In 1898, he began working for the Golden Rule dry goods stores in Colorado and Wyoming.

After buying one-third interest in a Golden Rule store in 1902, just five years later he was able to become not only the sole owner of it but of the other two stores. In 1912, he changed the name of all the Golden Rule stores, of which there were then 40, to the J.C. Penney Stores—but he never forgot the Golden Rule.

By the early 1920s, the J.C. Penney Company was one of the largest retail organizations in the country. But then in 1929 financial disaster struck. The stock market crash caused Penney to lose some $40,000,000.

Following a period of despair and then a period of rest in a sanitarium, he began to fight back, and he and his company became financially successful again.

In the 1930s he purchased the farm once owned by his parents. In later years, he gave money for the construction of a new library and then a new high school in his hometown of Hamilton.

Even though he had made numerous charitable contributions, at the time of his death in 1971 his estate was valued at $25,000,000. Truly, he was a Penney worth a lot.

But throughout his life, he sought to live by the Golden Rule, which was more than just the name of a dry goods chain store. In 1950 he published an autobiography titled Fifty Years with the Golden Rule.

Penney and Polk County

Many of you who are my personal friends know that June, my wife, is from Polk County in southwest Missouri, and you may even remember that she is a graduate of Humansville High School. But I didn’t know of J.C. Penney’s indirect connection to Humansville until earlier this year.

In 2012, the George Dimmitt Memorial Hospital in Humansville was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In a lengthy PDF document about that hospital, I learned that Charles Dimmitt, the son of a pastor of the Methodist church in Humansville, donated funds for the construction of that hospital as a memorial to his son George, who died in 1928.

It turns out that Charles Dimmitt had been employed by the Golden Rule stores and then between 1913 and 1922 had become wealthy as an executive in the J.C. Penney Company.

The same document says that Dimmitt also purchased and donated the site for a city park and made a substantial contribution toward the community building in Humansville, which was the venue of June’s high school graduation service.

All of this, it says, was perhaps because of “the example for philanthropy set by J.C. Penney.”

Yes, J.C. Penney was worth a lot—and in ways other than financial.