Talk:Fred G. Meyer

Birthplace

From this week's Fred Meyer advertising circular for the store's Founder's Day Sale:

Mr. Meyer Trivia: What was Fred G. Meyer's original name and where was he born?

Trivia Answer: Fred Grubmeyer was born in Germany in 1886. His family soon immigrated to Brooklyn, NY. At 22, he changed his name and headed west. Imagine...today you might be going to Grubmeyer's instead of Freddy's!

Obviously, this is in conflict with what is in the article. Just wanted to share this.RadioKAOS (talk) 08:19, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The source on the article isn't exactly stellar, it'd be nice to find a very solid, reliable source for this. tedder (talk) 14:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

(Picking up this discussion four years later) User Runyr70 recently changed Brooklyn to Hanover, Germany, in the infobox, but I've reverted that (at least for now), because no source was cited, and because every Oregonian article I could find that mentions his birthplace gives it as Brooklyn. However, that doesn't mean it's correct. It's possible the local media were given incorrect information by Meyer, but I have no way to determine that, so far. One reason for these doubts is that, in researching several decades of archived Oregonian articles at the Multnomah County Library (online via NewsBank), I found that the very first mention of the fact that his birth name was Grubmeyer did not appear until 1988, ten years after his death, which suggests that this detail was simply never revealed to the local media while Meyer was alive. With this in mind, it's certainly conceivable that Frederick Grubmeyer was born in Germany but that his family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. when he was only an infant, and that Meyer chose to say that he was born in Brooklyn. Or maybe he really was born in Brooklyn. I don't know, but for now, every source I've found says Brooklyn, so that's what the article needs to say, until and unless someone can cite a reliable source (with full identifying details, such as date, author, page number, etc.) that says he was born in Germany. SJ Morg (talk) 05:33, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I have a subscription to Ancestry.com. It's likely I could find something there, but it would likely be original research/synthesis and since it's behind a paywall we won't be able to link to it. Interested in having me take a look anyway? Valfontis (talk) 13:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Find a Grave, a non-RS, says Hanover here. An interesting page about Meyer published by the Harvard Business School is here. Doesn't answer the birth question, though. Finetooth (talk) 20:30, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Better yet, journalist Fred Leeson wrote a biography of Meyer, published this year. Here's the WorldCat link. Leeson was interviewed about the book by XXL Radio, and the interview is here. At about the 5:45 point in the interview Leeson says that Meyer was born in Germany. Details no doubt appear in the book. Finetooth (talk) 20:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The Multnomah County Library has eight copies of this book. I put a hold on the title, but there are 19 other people ahead of me. Finetooth (talk) 21:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

@Finetooth: Did you ever get your hands on a copy of the book? SJ Morg (talk) 08:52, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

No. However, I seem to be next in line for a copy since my account at the library says "1 of 1 holds" as of today. I think that means I'll get the next copy that is returned to the library. Finetooth (talk) 17:17, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

OK. I picked up my copy of My-Te-Fine Merchant from the library this afternoon and on page 17, it says, "In the spring of 1886, Conrad Grubmeyer and his wife, Sophie Dorothea Vorverk Grubmeyer, both 31, boarded an ocean liner docked in Bremen... The Grubmeyer parents had with them their two sons, William, 4, and Fritz (Fred), 2. The family arrived in Southhampton, N.Y., on May 7." Fred Leeson, the author of the biography from which I'm quoting, also says (on page 15) that at age 92, just before he died, Meyer told his secretary to bring him papers from his filing cabinets. He then "systematically removed items about his personal life and destroyed them." Just these couple of bits support the claim that Meyer was born in Germany, and they also partly explain why reporters might have included incorrect information in their news stories; their unreliable source might have been Meyer himself. How do you want to handle this in the article? Finetooth (talk) 03:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this. I think the way you handled the birthplace information was just fine. Unfortunately, one of the book excerpts you gave above raises a new discrepancy – in his birth year! Unless you mistyped above, it appears you are saying the book says little Fred was already 2 years old in "the spring of 1886", which would mean he was born in 1884 instead of 1886. Or did you omit "months" after "2"? (I hope so!) If the book did claim in that sentence that he was 2 years old when his family left Germany, and that it was in the spring of 1886, what does Leeson say about his birth year elsewhere in the book? SJ Morg (talk) 07:51, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Ay, yi! I didn't omit "months", but you are right; the math doesn't work. The sentence just ends with "Fritz (Fred), 2." Yet on page 19, Leeson says, "at age 19, in 1905", and on his draft registration in 1918 Meyer listed his age as 32, Leeson says. The math on those two pages compute to 1886 as Meyer's birth year, but he could not have been two years old when he was born (unless he was really really really unusual). I must report that I got a bit discouraged from making further changes to the article because I found many discrepancies between The Oregonian accounts and Leeson's account. For example, I have not found another reference to "Fritz" Meyer; the third brother is either "Henry" or "Harry" or maybe both; the chronology of Meyer's various jobs varies from one account to another; Leeson says Meyer went to Nome to look for gold while a different account says the Yukon; the names of the coffee and tea companies and descriptions vary from account to account, and so on. I realized at some point that I needed to be careful about assuming that Leeson's book was correct and that the variants were incorrect. The error about the birth date and age appears to be Leeson's. I don't know if each discrepancy can be sorted out. Finetooth (talk) 20:33, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I replaced the "2" with a weasel, "very early age", which ducks the problem until a better solution appears. Finetooth (talk) 02:59, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree; that's the best solution for now. Considering that both Leeson's book and all other sources say 1886 when stating a year (some even with an exact date of Feb. 21), I suspect that the young Fred's age-at-emigration really was 2 months, not 2 years, and either Leeson erred or his source for that detail erred (and he failed to notice the discrepancy, under that scenario), but we may never know. It is possible Meyer misled people about his true age, as he evidently misled people about his country of birth. I have an Oregonian obit for his brother William (published Jan. 13, 1965; saved during my earlier research), and it says William H. Grubmeyer was born on November 28, 1880. It does not say where he was born (undoubtedly Germany) or when the family emigrated to the U.S., only that they came to Portland from NY in 1910, but among the survivors it lists his brothers "Henry and Fred Meyer, both of Portland". (Evidently, William kept his birth surname Grubmeyer for his whole life.) This, too, conflicts with the Leeson sentence you cited; whether William and Fritz/Fred were 4 and 2 years, respectively, or 4 years and 2 months, respectively, that Leeson sentence would compute to an age difference of 2 to 4 years, whereas the William Grubmeyer obit computes to an age difference of more than 5 years! Your "weasel word" solution is good enough, and I don't think I want to spend more time on this.

Thanks also for your comments on the book, which I have not seen – i.e. the head's-up that it may not be a perfect source. I'm considering re-adding a (parenthesized) mention of "Harry" as an alternative name for Fred Meyer's younger brother. SJ Morg (talk) 09:16, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting additional info above. William, according to Leeson, remained a Grubmeyer throughout his life, but Henry changed his name to Meyer around the time that he and Fred formed the Mybros companies in the mid-1920s. A couple of other things I've learned so far from the Leeson book is that Meyer was often abrasive in staff meetings (reducing people, including his wife, to tears in front of everybody in the room) and litigious. A quick glance at what's been written about his business in journals available through JSTOR suggests that he spent quite a bit of time conferring with lawyers. There's something called the "Fred Meyer rule" related to lawsuits around mid-century, I think, though I have not yet pursued this angle. I haven't decided not to pursue it, but I'm a little tired of Fred just now. Finetooth (talk) 17:16, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Postscript: Please do re-add "Harry" or anything else you think appropriate. I haven't developed any owner-ish feelings about the article. Finetooth (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

City Public Market

Carroll Public Market or something else? Meyer is mentioned in the Carroll article. Valfontis (talk) 03:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Meyer seemed to have had properties all over the place at one time or another. Leeson (page 27) says the Mission Tea Company "rented a stall in a two-story brick building at Southwest First Avenue and Washington Street known as the City Public Market." Meyer also had a stall in 1910 on North Russell Street in the Albina district. The Piggly Wiggly, at Yamhill and Fifth, was in a building called the Liberty Market (taken over by Meyer in 1921 under the name of Pioneer Market Co. and leased to others). Leeson describes the Carroll Market (page 21) as an enterprise that "eventually provided spaces for 400 vendors along the curbs on both sides of Yamhill between First and Fifth Avenues." Meyer involved himself in various ways with the Carroll Market. My eyes twirl at the complications. Finetooth (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

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