Merrill L. Lewis
The Marion Hardware Store is a familiar institution, not only to the citizens of the county seat, but to practically all the people from the surrounding country who buy their goods in the city. The Manager of this store is Merrill L. Lewis. Mr. Lewis is a native of Genesse County, New York, but most of his early life was spent in Michigan. He was united in marriage on Christmas Day of 1873 to Miss Julia Breckenridge of Hillsdale County, Michigan, and after living in Lansing and Indianapolis, the family located in Marion in 1886. Since that time Mr. Lewis has been actively identified with the community. To this marriage were born three daughters: Gennie, Iva and Marjorie. The mother died October 5, 1896, ten years after the family located in Marion. Mr. Lewis afterwards married Mrs. Mary Roehm, and a daughter, Florence, was born to them.
When Mr. Lewis located in Marion he was a Traveling Hardware Salesman through Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, and Marion was central to his territory. He could be home frequently, and the family much enjoyed a home built to their own order on West Fourth Street, but later an opportunity came for entering a retail business and the residence was sold toward the investment.
Mr. Lewis first bought an interest in the Campbell and Ludlum Hardware Store, and later organized the Marion Hardware Store, of which he is Business Manager. He had his first experience in selling hardware in Lansing, and after five years as a retail clerk went into the wholesale trade as a knight of the grip. For fourteen years he traveled over three states, where he developed a splendid trade among hardware dealers.
Mr. Lewis associated himself with others in the hardware trade in Marion, the store being in the Wilson Block, but as the business increased more room was required, and W. C. Webster built the present store room to fill the demands, planning ventilation, light and heat to suit the requirements. There is no better equipped hardware store about the country. Miss Gennie Lewis is the efficient Bookkeeper, and it is nothing unusual for her to go on the floor and wait on the trade -an unusual occupation for a woman. Miss Lewis has specialized on seeds, a fine stock always carried by the store.
It was in 1910 that the Marion Hardware Store was moved into the present location, Washington and Fifth Streets, and a large force of men is required to take care of the trade. The firm has an extensive patronage from Marion factories, and from building contractors, and its farm patronage is excellent. No business in the city has better patronage, and there is no more efficient corps of salesmen waiting on trade than the Marion Hardware Store. There is no man in town who has the good of the community more at heart, and Mr. Lewis has always been a "booster". He is always allied with any advance movement, and when a subsidy must be raised he is always ready to solicit funds. The whole community recognizes the worth of a man who labors in its interests. Some of the business men who have subscribed to factory subsidies have learned what to expect when they see M. L. Lewis and other business men enter their doors -there is need of money to boost some local industry. The community efforts to equip the Marion Normal Institute was his special ambition, and he was gratified at the response of the people when the subsidy was raised for it.
On Sunday morning Mr. Lewis takes his place at the First Methodist Church, a sort of a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, and strangers as well as members are welcomed alike and offered a hymn book and psalter used in worship there. He always finds a seat for the stranger, and people visiting a church are glad of such attention. While the Lewis family has not always lived in grant County, it is certainly part of community affairs, and fills a niche both in the social and business world. While he is surrounded by a competent force of salesman, all of them defer to him in many things, a man who thoroughly knows the hardware trade and understands a profitable and necessary business, and that is what makes of the Marion Hardware Store a necessity in the community.
Source: Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914, page 976-77.