Historical Note

Here is what Grandpa Gregory (my Dad) wrote concerning the years of the shoe store:
Ernest F. Gregory, Jr. was married to Velma Grace Park
on February 24? 1915. They lived with her parents Orlando
and Ella Park on their farm for a time, then operated a farm
owned by Orlando Park about five miles west of Catholic Hill
in Wright Township. He had remarkable success on this farm
which I will mention in more detail later in this writing.
It was difficult for him to milk cows or use a pitch fork or
shovel for long periods due to cramping of his hands so after
some four years he gave up farming and moved into Hudson in
1920 where he went into partnership with David Owen, an older
man, in the shoe business.


When the depression hit in the early 1930's, business
became poor and our total take home pay from the shoe store
was no more than ten dollars a week. At that time mother
baked sorgum cookies and brown bread which I sold from door
to door. Our home also was registered with the department
of social services and twin boys Keith and Kenton Delano
(distant relatives of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) came to
live with us for several years.

David Owen, dad’s partner, died in 1936 or 1937 and dad
assumed full ownership of the shoe store which he operated
with mother's help. Thursdays he closed the store and went
to Toledo where he would fill the car with shoes from the
two wholesale shoe houses there. This method worked very
well along with shipments of merchandise from other
manufacturers. He didn't need to keep quite as large a
stock because he could "size in" weekly. Much of his
business was in work shoes and staple lines of men's,
women's, and children's shoes, but a .goodly part of his
business was in novelty shoes for women. He carried rubber
boots, felt packs, work arctics, and work rubbers that were
hard to find elsewhere. When he retired from the business
in the 1950's he sold it to a man and his wife who threw out
the staple lines and in a couple of years the business closed.