Morris & Dickson Co. Since 1841: The Story of an Enduring Family Business

By Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald

Once a main-street shopfront dispensing tonics and extracts, Morris & Dickson Co. now competes with major players in the pharmaceutical distribution industry. Since 1841 presents an in-depth case study of a family business that has weathered wars, fires, recessions, and the sudden death of four chief executives. How did the Louisiana firm survive while regional competitors disappeared? By grit, gumption, and the loyalty of its extended business family.
Author Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald received open access to decades of historical records in company archives. The Dicksons, the family that has run the business since 1899, also encouraged interviews with dozens of employees, many with more than forty years of service. “The result,” Fitzgerald said, “is a historical portrait enriched by many voices.”
“All business leaders can learn from enterprising families like the Dicksons how to adapt an organization to industry change without going against your core values,” wrote Dr. John A. Davis of Harvard Business School in the foreword. “This book is proof that it can be done.”
At age 175, Morris & Dickson has encountered all the issues that strain and often destroy family businesses: succession troubles, heavy estate taxes, stockholder unrest. The company nearly died twice but rose to its feet in the 1980s and grew like gangbusters. Rebuffing every buyout offer from competitors, Allen Dickson and his sons built a regional conglomerate grounded in advanced technology, respect for the customer, and economies of scale. Stalwart employees and a culture of initiative sustained them through a destructive tornado at corporate headquarters in Shreveport in 1996.
Brothers Skipper, Mark, and Paul Dickson led the business into the 21st century with a winning growth strategy based on a single warehouse, software-driven efficiencies, and a reputation for speed and accuracy. Championing independent pharmacies and harnessing new technologies, Morris & Dickson proved its mettle day after day, especially in a crisis. In 2005, the company delivered medical supplies to Gulf Coast hospitals in the final hours before Hurricane Katrina arrived and within hours after she left.
Morris & Dickson continued to expand its reach, and by 2016 was delivering goods overnight in fourteen states and providing pharmacy-specific software to customers in all fifty states.
In publishing Since 1841, company president Paul Dickson aims to present an in-depth case study of a fiercely independent, privately owned firm that has evolved with its industry, triumphed over tragedy, and prospered over a remarkable span of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997175127

Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald

Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald, formerly business editor and associate editorial page editor for The Shreveport Times, holds degrees in business from Loyola University in New Orleans and Louisiana Tech University. She is the author of The Courtship of Two Doctors: A 1930s Love Story of Letters, Hope and Healing (2012) and owner of Martha Fitzgerald Consulting (www.marthafitzgerald.com).

Book preview

220 Travis Street, home of Morris & Dickson Co. Ltd. from 1905 to 1984. The fourth floor was added in 1924. In the 1970s, the company began expanding to adjacent buildings.

(Morris & Dickson Archives)

Published by Paul Meade Dickson

Copyright © 2016 by Paul Meade Dickson

Smashwords

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing

Dust jacket design: Kathi Dunn, www.dunn-design.com

Art direction and production supervision: Kathi Dunn, www.dunn-design.com

Interior design: Dorie McClelland, www.springbookdesign.com

Endsheets: Design, Patti Isaacs. Historic photos, Noel Memorial Library, LSU Shreveport.

Truck photo, Neil Johnson.

ISBN 978-0-9971751-0-3 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-9971751-1-0 (pap)

ISBN 978-0-9971751-2-7 (epub)

ISBN 978-0-9971751-3-4 (mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Fitzgerald, Martha Holoubek.

Title: Morris & Dickson Co. since 1841 : the story of an enduring family business / Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald.

Other titles: Since 1841

Description: Shreveport : Paul Meade Dickson, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN: 978-0-9971751-0-3 (cloth) | 978-0-9971751-1-0 (paperback) | 978-0-9971751-2-7 (epub) | 978-0-9971751-3-4 (mobi) | LCCN: 2016900233

Subjects: LCSH: Morris & Dickson Co.—History. | Family-owned business enterprises—Louisiana—Shreveport—History. | Corporations—Louisiana—Shreveport—History. | Distributors (Commerce)—Louisiana—Shreveport—History. | Pharmaceutical industry—Southern States—History. | Drugstores—Louisiana—Shreveport—History. | Family-owned business enterprises—United States—Management. | Corporations—United States—Management. | Pharmaceutical industry—Southern States—Management. | Distributors (Commerce)—Southern States—Management. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Industries/Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Distribution | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Corporate & Business History

Classification: LCC: HD9666.9.M67 F58 2016 | DDC: 338.4/7615109763—dc23

In tribute to Markham Allen Dickson Sr.

President and chairman of the board

Morris & Dickson Co., 1952–2014

(Photo by Virginia Jack)

Contents

Foreword, by John A. Davis

Introduction

Part I: Historic Times, 1841–1952

1John Worthington Morris

2Thomas H. Morris and Sons

3Samuel A. Dickson

4Claudia and S. Allen Dickson

5Claudius Dickson: Rise and Fall

6Claudius Dickson: Rebirth

7Claudius Dickson: The War Years

8Selden Senter

Images: Morris & Dickson Then and Now

Part II: Modern Times, 1952–Present

9Overview: How the Company Grew

10 M. Allen Dickson: Learning Curve

11 M. Allen Dickson: High Discount

12 M. Allen Dickson: A Family Business

13 M. Allen Dickson: Personnel

14 M. Allen Dickson: Closely Held

15 Dickson and Sons: Kay Lane

16 Dickson and Sons: Higher Volume

17 Dickson and Sons: Succession

18 The Dickson Brothers: Tornado

19 The Dickson Brothers: The Port

20 The Dickson Brothers: Technology

21 The Dickson Brothers: Hurricanes

22 The Dickson Brothers: Economy of Scale

23 The Dickson Brothers: Passing the Baton

Appendices

ATimelines

J. W. Morris & Co. and Successor Businesses, 1841–1901

Major Events, Morris & Dickson Co. Ltd., 1901–1952

Major Events, Morris & Dickson Co. Ltd., 1952–2015

BExcerpt of Inventory, J. W. Morris & Co., November 21, 1854

COwnership and Location Changes, 1800s

DDividends at a Glance, 1900–1923

EOfficers, Morris & Dickson Co. Ltd., 1896–1957

Notes

Sources

Genograms

Foreword

One hundred and seventy-five years in business is a singular achievement. It is an anniversary so rare, I have trouble pronouncing the names for the celebration of it. Here’s the one coined by Bell Labs on its own 175th birthday:

Happy Terquasquicentennial, Morris & Dickson.

Studies show that even the best businesses started today will struggle to last twenty-five years. That’s because change is happening faster and faster. We read about this every day, reported as disruption. If anybody knows what disruption is, it is Morris & Dickson. But the disruptions caused by the accelerating rate of change may turn out to be even more challenging than the setbacks this company has already faced: the fires, the wars, the Great Depression, the sudden deaths of three chief executives, the political and social policies that limited what products the company could sell and to whom it could sell them. And now, adding to the list, there is intensifying consolidation in the industry, putting even more price pressure on regional players like Morris & Dickson.

All business leaders can learn from enterprising families like the Dicksons how to adapt an organization to industry change without going against core values. This book is proof that it can be done. According to my research, on the part of a family business, it requires unity, talent, and the achievement of growth.

To be successful for years, let alone generations, a family in business needs to be united. To be united as a family doesn’t mean that everybody always has to get along, but the Dicksons tend to like one another, and they like working together. Claudius Dickson, CEO from 1924 to 1946, liked going into business with his aunt Claudia so much (she was a major shareholder) that he did it more than once. On the eve of the Depression, when it might have made good financial sense to merge with an arch competitor founded by two former employees, the Dicksons decided that the cultural fit made the deal impossible. Holding a mountain of inventory, shouldering a huge debt load, they had to sell all their merchandise to the competitor and agree to stay out of the wholesale drug business for five years. They headed into the Great Depression in financial ruin, but they were united, and they coped with the stress by starting a successful new line of business—retail drugstores. They were well positioned to get back into wholesaling when the penalty period ran out.

To be united as a family means to be in agreement on the family’s purpose, on how it will run its business, and on how it will treat its stakeholders. For five generations, the Dickson family has remained united by a driving purpose: to be a successful regional distributor of pharmaceuticals and a civic leader in the communities the family serves from its base in Shreveport in the Red River valley of northwest Louisiana.

These communities need advocates like the Dicksons. Most people in rural communities across America get their primary health-care products from independent pharmacies like those supplied by Morris & Dickson. Independent pharmacies fulfill more than 40 percent of all drug prescriptions in the United States. We may forget that the big box model doesn’t serve everyone in need, but the Dicksons never forget.

As for talent, the Dicksons (like many high-performing business families) tend to modestly downplay how hard it is to develop the right talent in the family, generation after generation. Once again, this book is proof that it can be done. Brothers Paul, Skipper, and Mark Dickson have inherited a 175-year-old culture of continuous improvement, and they continue to improve on it. They keep their eye on five balls at a time—products, pricing, distribution, customers, and employees. They keep asking themselves, How can we innovate in each of these areas to keep up with changing needs?

Read this book and you will learn the stories of one clever, adaptive CEO after another. My research on wealth paths shows that it is not enough to line up capable successors to lead the business. Even if you do that well, you are still at high risk of losing your wealth (capital to invest in your business) according to the Three Generation Rule and go from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. Founders, business owners, and families in business need to identify and develop one or more family members every generation who are skilled at making good bets on business activities and people to grow assets—taking calculated risks that pay off. In a business with tight margins, the Dicksons have learned this important lesson in survival over generations, and I have observed how they keep teaching it to the next generation, raising well-educated, hard-working, and talented kids who are excited about continuing the family’s legacy of growth.

Without growth, even united and talented business families fail to pass on their legacies. Family wealth is necessary to control, stabilize, and protect family companies. So growing wealth in the family is critical to the survival of every family business, public or private. In a business that demands thrifty management every day, it helps to have frugal family owners. Morris & Dickson doesn’t need to grow out of being a strong regional player in its industry, for instance, as long as it can keep making prudent and timely investments in technologies that benefit both the stakeholders and the company. To do that, shareholders can’t demand too much financially from the business. In thirty-plus years of field research, I have learned that how shareholders behave generally has a lot to do with the ownership culture they are steeped in.

The Dicksons build on a family culture that lets them consistently develop capable owners. I have mentioned hard work. Dickson family members work diligently and cleverly, and those who work with them expect the same of themselves. This book also shows how in-laws have played important roles in establishing the right family culture for growing family wealth. Early in the family’s history, we read of hardworking brothers who became doctors and married proud, wealthy sisters, women who ably steered the family through one tragedy after another.

As the family grew, members kept valuing productivity over consumption. They liked to work more than they liked to spend money. They strove to excellence in their professions. They didn’t define themselves by what they had but by how they could usefully and responsibly steward what they had for the greater good. They sold land or liquidated other investments to buy inventory. They tightened belts to extend distribution. This combination of frugality and practicality serves them well. In the 1970s, Morris & Dickson pruned the ownership tree with a shareholder buyout. Healthy pruning (at the right time, for the right reasons, at the right price) can be difficult for many families, but all business families need to plan for it, practice it, and get used to it.

Now, more than ever before, multigenerational success depends on family companies being able to move smoothly in and out of various lines of business to achieve overall growth. Also (and this is second nature to the Dicksons by now), it is important to know when to invest in the business (setting it up for growth in the short and medium terms) and when to invest in your owners (growing family wealth that supports the business long-term).

Unity, talent, growth.

If you want to grow your family company and pass it to the next generation, memorize this phrase like a mantra. I would give it to the Dicksons as a 175th anniversary gift if they didn’t already know the recipe.

Finally, as a scholar in the field of family business studies, I would like to congratulate Martha Fitzgerald on writing a useful and highly detailed business history that will inform scholars for many years to come.

Dr. John A. Davis

Faculty Chair, Families in Business Executive Education Program, Harvard Business School

Founder, Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise

Introduction

Claudius Dickson was a fighter. The foes he faced as a business owner in 1931 could not be as easily dispatched, however, as those he’d faced as a young man in the boxing ring. Critical cash flow. Crushing debt to a New York lender. Retail customers with empty cash registers. A country sliding into the abyss of a great economic depression. And a strong local competitor headed by a former employee. Once a trusted lieutenant, the man’s every success stung like a slap in the face.

Claudius was no quitter. Deep in his bones, he was a family man, running a family business. Several questions haunted him: Was there any future to supplying drugs wholesale? Could he reap enough income to sustain his workforce and support his stockholders, primarily his beloved Aunt Claudia? Would there be any business left to hand on to his nine-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter?

Morris & Dickson Co. Ltd. dated to 1841. For decades, its fortunes entwined with those of its home in Shreveport, Louisiana, a steamboat port and regional crossroads. Later, the laying of railway lines and arrival of gasoline-powered delivery trucks opened wider markets and revolutionized distribution. The pharmaceuticals trade matured into a sophisticated national network with grand opportunities and more than a few pitfalls.

Morris & Dickson prospered, at first, under Claudius’s direction. In 1930, however, Dickson turned to an East Coast lender for $100,000 in short-term loans. The debt was now $150,000 and coming due. Claudius would have to pay or violate his personal code of ethics.

His family’s business had already weathered civil war and reconstruction, one world war, and several recessions. It had survived two devastating fires and the death of three chief executives, two named Morris and one named Dickson. Would it be Claudius’s role to lock the doors ten years before the company marked its centennial?

The early history of Morris & Dickson, from founding through incorporation, unfolds through courthouse documents, tax rolls, news items and advertisements, census records, and archival material at public and university libraries. Records of later years begin with corporate minutes in 1896 and continue with demand notes, general ledgers, early federal tax returns, and year-end financial statements. These were among a rich store of documents preserved in a century-old safe and opened to the historian.

Fleshing out the narrative are the memoirs of longtime president M. Allen Dickson Sr., son of Claudius, and the memories of Morris & Dickson employees. Several persons interviewed had been with the company forty, fifty, sixty years or more, illustrating the fundamental difference between working for a corporate entity and being part of an extended family.

The picture that emerges is the uneven progress of a pharmaceutical distributor—a family business closely tied to the wits and vitality of its leaders. It begins with young Welsh émigré John Worthington Morris, who put down roots in a frontier town bristling with possibility. J. W. Morris & Co. specialized in medicinals but supplied soap, books, varnish, and more to transients and newly arrived settlers. After yellow fever claimed his life, John’s youngest brother, Thomas H. Morris, took over the debt-laden business. A series of partnerships helped Morris start afresh after a fire and resolve lingering credit issues.

As a single proprietor, Thomas weathered wartime scarcities and military occupation, building up a business to hand on to his three sons. Another series of shortlived partnerships ended in 1892 with formation of Morris & Dickson, headed by his youngest son, Allen D. Morris, and physician Samuel Augustus Dickson, member of a prominent local family and an aspiring politician. The company incorporated in 1896, ensuring the business could survive future ownership changes. Morris departed in 1899, a year after another devastating fire.

The story continues with a new family at the helm and its own issues with succession. Under Dr. Dickson’s leadership, Morris & Dickson settled into new headquarters on Travis Street, its home for the next eighty years. Politics beckoned—Dr. Dickson was twice elected mayor—and prohibition issues bedeviled him, leading to his oldest son’s death in 1916 at age twenty-nine. Dr. Dickson died seven weeks later. Claudia Dickson, widow of his brother, stepped in as president, holding the rudder steady until his younger sons finished wartime service. S. Allen Dickson, son no. 3, rode out a rise and fall of fortunes before handing the presidency to his younger brother in 1924. Claudius Dickson presided over the company’s near-demise during the Depression and engineered its rebirth, finally enjoying stability and prosperity during the war years. At Claudius’s death in 1946, in-law Selden Senter took the reins.

The story of the modern era begins in 1952 with a splintering of the company, Senter’s resignation, and the ascension of M. Allen Dickson. The son of Claudius Dickson and grandson of Dr. Dickson rescued the remnants of the business and set it on course for astonishing growth. Acting as much on instinct as training, he promoted new product lines, slashed the profit margin with discount pricing, and developed computer systems for independent pharmacists. Buying out minor stockholders won him the freedom to take risks. Rebuffing every buyout offer from competitors, he and his three sons built a regional conglomerate grounded in advanced technology, respect for the customer, and economies of scale. Loyal employees and a culture of initiative sustained them through a destructive tornado at corporate headquarters. Brothers Skipper, Mark, and Paul Dickson led the company into the twenty-first century with a winning growth strategy based on a single warehouse, software-driven efficiencies, and a reputation for speed and accuracy.

In seventeen decades, Morris & Dickson encountered all the issues that strain and often destroy family businesses: succession troubles, heavy estate taxes, stockholder unrest. The company’s continued, even startling, success proves that family ties may chafe, but they also may fortify and motivate. Fathers and sons, brothers, sister, aunt, and in-laws all contributed to the innovation and business savvy that keep Morris & Dickson humming well into its second century.

PART I

HISTORIC TIMES, 1841–1952

1

John Worthington Morris

Frontier Shreveport

J. W. Morris & Co.

John Worthington Morris, a Welsh-born druggist and recent émigré, set up shop in pioneer Shreveport in 1841.¹ At age twenty-one, he offered the right set of skills for Louisiana’s new frontier: energy, vision, and the entrepreneurial spirit. The fledgling riverport, incorporated as a town in 1839, attracted its share of rough-hewn settlers and dockhands. What it needed, however, was business-minded folks like Morris.

One of ten children of a Pembrokeshire farmer, Morris arrived in America in 1837, booking passage from Liverpool to New York.² What drew Morris farther south? Brisk trade and the promise of fortunes to be made.

Shreveport was a major crossroads for road and river traffic. From its inception, the company that would become Morris & Dickson capitalized on the town’s prime location for shipment and delivery of goods.³ Eight blocks wide and eight blocks long, Shreveport commanded a bluff overlooking the newly navigable Red River, which flowed southeast across Louisiana to the Mississippi River. In 1835, this patch of land had been Caddo Indian territory. Now it was a major gateway to the new Republic of Texas, twenty miles west, and the new state of Arkansas, forty miles north.

Waves of migrants traveled rutted trails west from Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas in search of good land and a better life.⁴ Others arrived by land or boat from southern Louisiana. Among them were members of a family named Dickson, who purchased prime tracts on both sides of the Red River.⁵

It’s likely that Morris himself arrived by steamboat from New Orleans in 1840, having set up a riverborne supply chain for his merchandise. A January 6, 1841, list of letters awaiting pickup at the New Orleans post office included one in the name of J. W. Morris.⁶

Federal land policy prompted much of the migration. The U.S. Land Act of 1820 reduced the minimum size of land grants to eighty acres and the minimum price per acre to $1.25. With as little as $100, settlers could buy a small plot of public land or make a down payment on a larger plot.⁷

Among those pulled westward were well-to-do planters from the Eastern Seaboard. After decades of productivity, the soil of many farms was depleted and could no longer support the owners, much less a growing population of slaves. These planters set their sights on fertile land made available by the Louisiana Purchase. Particularly desirable were plots already cleared and cultivated by agrarian Indians such as the Caddo. Demand for land grants grew quickly, and government surveyors fell critically behind. Beginning in 1830, a series of temporary pre-emption laws recognized the rights of squatters—those who moved onto land and started farming it before the land was surveyed.

In 1841, the year Morris set up shop in Shreveport, the U.S. Congress yielded to pressure and passed the Distributive Preemption Act. Adult citizens who had lived on a plot of land for more than fourteen months could buy up to 160 acres at $1.25 per acre. States would receive 10 percent of the proceeds. Planters had to work the land for at least five years or risk losing it. If the fields were idle for six months, they could lose their claim.⁸ Hundreds of land-hungry settlers staked claims in north Louisiana in the 1840s or passed through on their way to Texas or Arkansas. Whether their stay in Shreveport would be short or long, they needed supplies of all kinds, including medicinal remedies. J. W. Morris & Co. would provide them.

The first public notice of the business, a newspaper advertisement on January 14, 1841, listed no address other than the Southren [sic] Drug Store. Morris’s only local competition was the older Shreveport Drug Store. Where the young émigré obtained starting capital is unknown. It may have been personal savings from his years in the drug trade in Wales and New York, or personal credit, or a partnership with a physician or established drug house. In September 1840, one young druggist sought employment through the Daily Picayune of New Orleans. A situation in the country would be preferred read the advertisement. Whether this was young Morris cannot be confirmed.⁹

In any case, the initial grubstake may have been modest, enough simply to rent shop space and acquire a small assortment of goods. An 1860s druggist on the Montana frontier reported a handsome profit his first fifteen months in business.¹⁰

By 1844, Morris occupied shop space on Texas Street, the wide main thoroughfare, only steps from the riverfront, where goods arrived from New Orleans.¹¹ The building, set on a lot 30 feet wide and 150 feet deep, also offered office space and living quarters on the upper floors. In residence was A. F. Clarke, a physician and likely a colleague. Next door, on the northeast corner of Texas and Spring streets, a three-story brick hotel drew a steady stream of travelers and potential store customers. Also nearby were eating houses, a silversmith shop, and cigar shop.¹²

Before the Civil War, pharmacy in the United States was more trade than profession. Drug clerks did the major work of manufacturing and compounding. Few attended pharmacy schools. The majority of clerks—also called druggists—learned their craft as teenage apprentices and worked in apothecary shops owned by physicians. Their work involved percolators and extractors. They would grind and macerate roots, leaves, and other raw materials, boil them down to create powders, or mix them with water or alcohol to form infusions and tinctures.¹³ Sometimes the drug clerks went into business for themselves, buying the store from the physician.

Shopkeepers were hard pressed to make a profit on retail sales of medical goods alone. The business often evolved into a general store or wholesale establishment. On the frontier, sales of oil, paint, and other items kept pharmacies in business.¹⁴ Morris specialized in drugs and chemicals, according to early advertisements in the Caddo Gazette. As early as 1843, however, his shelves were well stocked with antebellum items various and sundry: Paint, glass, and brushes for construction work. Razors and pocket knives. Quills, steel pens, and ink. Toilet water and scented soaps. Fishing tackle. Snuff and cigars.¹⁵ Imagine an 1840s shop-front version of the twenty-first-century Walgreens.

Morris’s selection of books reflected an educated clientele with aspirations to lives of refinement. Among them: Bibles, dictionaries, and etiquette guides; biographies of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Clay; and the poetry of Lord Byron, Robert Burns, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

For the medical trade, Morris supplied lancets, instruments for pulling teeth, bottles of quinine, gallons of castor oil, and barrels of Epsom salts. Customers could find saltpeter, calomel, opium, ready-mixed concoctions, and the how-to guide Gunn’s Domestic Medicine. Patent medicines included Peter’s Pills, Swaim’s Panacea, and Sands’ Sarsaparilla. Also in stock were cognac brandy, port, madeira and sweet wines, suitable for invalids.¹⁶

Louisiana, admitted to statehood in 1812, was the first state to regulate apothecaries to prevent fraud, adulterated drugs, poisons, and unauthorized prescribing of medicines. Pharmacists were required to present a diploma or other evidence of professional training and be examined by a board. Louisiana’s pharmacy review board for the western district, which governed nearly all Louisiana except New Orleans, did not meet often. J. W. Morris & Co., however, did receive its drug license by the 1850s.¹⁷

Morris purchased the Texas Street lot in 1847 for $2,100 in promissory notes. He had already bought other city lots nearby and moved his residence to the first property he acquired, three lots on nearby Travis Street. In the town’s earliest years, land speculation fueled property turnover. Morris and others made a tidy profit, sometimes securing deals at sheriff’s tax sales.¹⁸

Morris had more facets to his character than a merchant life could satisfy—which would prove to be the case with most of his successors in the business as well. Shortly after arrival, he became involved in government and religious affairs. Voters elected him city tax assessor in 1842. He served until 1848 and later was elected city trustee. In 1845 Morris helped organize Shreveport’s First Presbyterian Church; trustees met often in the counting room of his store. That year he also was named treasurer for Caddo Parish, the county named after the area’s indigenous people.¹⁹

By 1850 Shreveport boasted roughly 1,700 inhabitants and Caddo Parish nearly 9,000.²⁰ Among the latter were 5,200 slaves, suggesting migration from older plantations where soil had played out. A landed aristocracy developed along the rich bottomlands of the Red River, along with a meticulous system of credit. Cotton planters purchased medicines, foodstuffs, and other basics on account, payable at harvest time.²¹

Planters also ran commissaries, or plantation stores, which purchased items from Morris for resale—thus establishing early the company’s reliance on wholesale as well as retail sales. An 1843 advertisement solicited business from physicians, planters, and country merchants. Antebellum records of Caspiana plantation in southern Caddo Parish include Morris Co. receipts for laudanum, opium, cholera medicine, blister plaster, brandy, and bay rum.²²

Commerce in the area thrived but was subject to the vagaries of the Red River. Major shipments were by river, so storekeepers stocked up during high-water months, November through March.²³

Commerce Street on Shreveport’s riverfront, from the Red River, 1850

(Noel Memorial Library, LSU Shreveport)

In general, cash was scarce in upland Louisiana. Ranchers and farmers offered cattle or horses in payment for goods, or drove wagons filled with cotton and hides from as far south as San Augustine, Texas. Some merchants accepted eggs, butter, corn, and syrup in trade.²⁴

One sign of Shreveport’s progress: eighteen doctors and one dentist settled in Caddo Parish by 1850. Most physicians compounded and dispensed remedies on their own. Much medicating was still done at home or on the plantation, however, from homegrown herbs or ingredients purchased from pharmacists. Some Louisiana drug houses supplied medicine chests for plantation use, with guidance on preparation of remedies and treatment of diseases and injuries typical in rural settings.²⁵

By today’s standards of health care, conditions were primitive. Infectious diseases ran nearly unchecked—malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. So many children died as youngsters—and so many adults succumbed to accidents, disease, or childbirth—that households often comprised stepparents, half-siblings, and distant cousins. Morris was not immune to the trend. Within seven years of his arrival in Shreveport, he married the widowed mother of a young boy, fathered a son, was widowed himself, and remarried.²⁶

Business prospered, however, and in 1848 his twenty-year-old brother, Thomas Henry Morris, joined him in Shreveport. The 1850 U.S. census finds the younger Morris and a fourteen-year-old relative by marriage living with Dr. Clarke above the store and lists them both as druggists. The following year, Morris made another hire: Scotsman R. H. Lindsay, who had passed his medical boards in Georgia and worked in New Orleans as a drug clerk. It is not known where either Morris brother studied chemistry, apprenticed, or learned the drug trade.²⁷

By the early 1850s, John Morris had a number of local competitors, including joint ventures of pharmacists or a drug store and a physician. New Orleans drug firms, which could sell items at a lower price than Shreveport businesses, also advertised in north Louisiana newspapers.

Morris had little room to maneuver where pricing was concerned. I am compelled to reduce my business to an entire Cash system, he announced on January 9, 1850, excepting those only, who have been prompt in their payments heretofore, and new customers. Necessity requires me to adopt and enforce such Rules. My friends will always find me ready to wait on them as usual.²⁸ Bulging accounts receivable and delinquent notes receivable would become enduring themes of the company’s early history.

Morris filed suit in Caddo Parish three times that year and three times the next to collect what he was owed. In neighboring Bossier Parish, he had a debtor’s property attached. Four customers had signed a twelve-month promissory note for $185. One of the four, however, left Louisiana without leaving sufficient amount of property to pay debt.²⁹

Beginning in 1852, the Morris family suffered a series of personal tragedies, leading to the company’s first crisis in leadership. In the span of seventeen months, the merchant and his second wife lost their young son and infant daughter—the latter to yellow fever—and Morris himself, only thirty-three, succumbed to the dreaded plague. He died in October 1853, shortly after dictating a will.³⁰

I desire my brother Thomas H. Morris, John directed, to continue my business and close it up in a mercantile way so as not to lose money by closing it too hastily. He also willed his brother his medical library.³¹

2

Thomas H. Morris and Sons

The 1850s

J. W. Morris & Bro.

T. H. Morris

Miller & Morris

Thomas Morris, twenty-five and single, was now responsible for a major local business and the support of his brother’s family: surviving son James Eppes Morris, age eight, and pregnant wife Catherine M. Cates Morris, twenty-one. Her yet-to-be-born child, another son, would die as an infant.¹ Settling the estate would take nearly two years—a lesson not lost on the younger Morris.

More than eight hundred customers, including thirty doctors, owed nearly $19,000 in notes and credits. These debts by far accounted for the bulk of the estate’s assets, which otherwise comprised two city lots valued together at $3,300 and some $3,900 in merchandise. The list of debtors consumed thirty pages of the J. W. Morris succession, and the shop inventory another eighteen pages.² (See Appendix B: Excerpt of Inventory, J. W. Morris & Co., November 21, 1854.)

T. H. Morris kept the doors of the business open with intent to settle the estate and buy its assets. The company briefly advertised as J. W. Morris & Bro., Wholesale and Retail Druggists, Apothecaries and Manufacturing Chemists. A 42-page advertising booklet, the Shreveport Almanac for the Year 1854, likely was in development before John Morris’s death. The booklet provided astronomical information and planting guides, in the centuries-old tradition of farmers’ almanacs, as well as government listings, a court calendar for western Louisiana and eastern Texas, and a business directory for Shreveport. T. H. Morris reserved three full pages and several half-pages for his own ads.³

The store’s selection of goods included musical and surgical instruments, horse and cattle medicines, superior shot guns and Pistols, and pure wine and liquors for medicinal purpose. Morris imported English, French, and German drugs, chemicals, and cutlery.

One advertisement lists family medicines produced by Morris & Bro. Among them were the following:

Morris’ Compound Fluid Extract of Sarsaparilla

Morris’ Astringent Mixture

Morris’ Balsam of Wild Cherry

Morris’ Arabian, or Nerve and Bone Liniment

Morris’ Anti-Bilious, or Family Pills

Morris’ Wine Chalybeate Bitters

Morris’ Fever and Ague Mixture

Morris’ Hair Tonic

Morris’ Hair Dye

Whiteman’s Tonic Pills

Frederick’s Mixture

Frederick’s Pile Ointment

Morris’ Breast Ointment

The back-page advertisement identifies the store’s location as "Sign of the Golden Mortar, North Texas st. [sic], Next Drug Store to the River." That would change shortly, however. On October 3, 1854, the store’s entire block burned down in an early morning fire.

The South-Western, a Shreveport newspaper, recorded the tragedy the following day, speculating it was an act of arson. "[T]he building formerly occupied by Mr. Horne as a restaurat [sic], situated on Texas Street, between Spring and Commerce streets, was in flames. The adjoining buildings being all wood the fire spread with great rapidity, and in a short time the long range of frame tenements extending from the river to Morris’ drug store were in ashes. Morris’ drug store then caught on fire, from which the flames communicated to the Nelson House, a fine three story brick building, which was also consumed. … The warehouse of Mr. Morris, in the rear of his store, being fire-proof escaped unharmed."⁴

While much of Morris’s stock was saved, the South-Western reported, the shop and its contents were only partially insured. Thomas Morris’s once-promising future—he had married a physician’s daughter only the month before—was now in jeopardy.⁵

In desperate need of a new business location, he tried to wrap up his brother’s estate. Last Notice, read an October 11 South-Western advertisement. All persons indebted to the estate of John W. Morris are notified to come forward and settle without further delay, as the affairs of the succession must be closed up in a short time. Those who are unable to pay cash can give their notes. I can be found for a few days at Mr. Miller’s Drug Store, Texas St. THOS H. MORRIS, Exe’r.⁶

Thomas Henry Morris, circa 1870s

(Courtesy of Peggy Marsh Liddell)

The following month, Morris reopened for business in the next block of Texas Street. He took the occasion to officially announce his proprietorship: The old patrons and friends of Morris’ Drug Store, (recently destroyed by fire), are respectfully informed that the undersigned will continue the business … and solicits a continuance of the patronage awarded to the late J. W. Morris. He is now prepared to fill all orders. Physicians’ prescriptions carefully put up, at all hours, day or night. T. H. MORRIS.⁷

One ad attested to the new proprietor’s skill in the laboratory, using a formula first developed by his brother and listed in the 1854 almanac.

Morris’s Fever & Ague Mixture Or Vegetable Febrifuge and Anti-Bilious Pills.

Is all the Medicine necessary to effect a complete cure of the most obstinate case of Ague and Fever, or Chills and Fever. Cases of longstanding which have resisted the treatment of the most successful practitioners, have been readily cured. It promotes a regular and healthy action of the digestive organs, fully restoring the harmony of action between the stomach and liver, and the other important functions of the system; and in the treatment of dyspepsia, night sweats, depraved appetite and jaundice, it has been of great benefit; but in fevers, especially fevers and ague, and intermittent fever, its powers have been principally tested, and in such cases it has been pronounced sovereign to all other remedies, or any treatment heretofore discovered.

The Mixture is put up in pint bottles, at $1 each, and the Anti-Bilious Pills in boxes, at 25 cents.

Prepared only by T. H. MORRIS, Chemist.

Another touted the efficacy of an early brand-name product, Dr. M. Woolly’s celebrated South American Powders: the only speedy, safe and effectual care for gonorrhea, syphilis and all venereal diseases. Price: $3.⁸

At the closing of the John Morris estate in August 1855, outstanding debt still exceeded $10,000. The notes and credits were divided among his heirs—his wife and son. Thomas Morris bought out the store’s merchandise and started anew, as T. H. Morris, Wholesale & Retail Druggist, Chemist & Bookseller. Continuing to speak directly to his customers through weekly newspaper ads, Morris committed to upholding his brother’s professional ethics: Being fully alive to the principles upon which business was conducted by my predecessor, it will be my aim and pleasure to maintain those principles in all their force; and that the reputation of the house, for dealing only in merchandise of the best quality, shall suffer no deterioration at my hands.⁹

It is remarkable that the business, still reeling from fire and relocation, survived its first few months. All riverborne commerce suffered in 1855. The water level of the Red River fell so low that people could walk across it. As one resident recalled: Merchandise could be brought to Shreveport only in wagons from Lake Providence [Louisiana] on the Mississippi or from the mouth of Red River, each point being distant from Shreveport about 200 miles. … The stocks of all merchants of Shreveport dwindled away and prices soared.¹⁰ Better days were ahead. It was T. H. Morris, as the father of five, who would draw a second generation into the family business.

In the 1850s, more than sixty thousand people traveled through Shreveport on their way west. The town became a commercial center serving Oklahoma and Arkansas as well as Texas and Louisiana. Steamboat, wagon, and coach trade thrived, particularly in cotton and in cattle herded east from Texas. Shipments of goods took sixty hours by road from Alexandria in central Louisiana and three weeks by river from New Orleans. Northwest Louisiana became the state’s primary producer of cotton. Caddo and neighboring parishes each had thirty major cotton plantations of more than one thousand acres, with dozens more of lesser size.¹¹

The Morris company appealed to an increasingly wealthy and sophisticated clientele, billing itself as Importer and Dealer in Pure French English & American Drugs & Chemicals. Its proprietor began to step out of his brother’s shadow. Morris was named a trustee of First Presbyterian Church in 1855 and later an elder.¹² He and his wife bought and sold land, much as his brother had years earlier.

The business environment, however, was volatile throughout the 1850s. Nationally, more than five thousand businesses closed in the Panic of 1857. The price of cotton collapsed, falling 25 percent. New Orleans, with its dependence on the crop, suffered more than other U.S. cities.¹³ Locally, the South-Western recorded the start of a number of copartnerships, with two or more businessmen sharing expenses and profits, and paying taxes as a single entity. It also reported a number of dissolutions. The Morris company would experience both before the decade’s end.

On January 1, 1858, Morris partnered with druggist William B. Miller, a fellow member of First Presbyterian Church and his benefactor after the fire. As Miller & Morris, they occupied a new brick building on Texas Street. [B]y our united means we are enabled to present to the public a very large and complete stock, which we will SELL AT NEW ORLEANS PRICES. Miller & Morris lasted only two years. Thomas Morris bought the lot with twenty-five feet of frontage on Texas Street and in January 1860 reopened as a single proprietor. He promised No Variation from High Water Prices.¹⁴

The company would operate at the same location—28 Texas Street (later renumbered 212 Texas Street)—through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the dawn of the railroad era, and yellow-fever outbreaks. Each would present its own set of challenges to the business.¹⁵

War and Reconstruction

Morris & Carlisle

T. H. Morris & Co.

Iler & Morris

Iler, Morris & Hibbette

Iler, Morris & Dickson

Morris & Dickson Co.

Louisiana seceded from the Union in January 1861 and joined the Confederacy. Morris, his trade considered too essential for him to go off to war, signed on as a second lieutenant with a local militia, the Shreveport Sentinels, and was elected city trustee.¹⁶

The town swelled in importance to the Confederacy, sprouting military training grounds, foundries, an arsenal, navy yard, and infirmary. Thousands of troops from Texas and Arkansas boarded steamboats in Shreveport on their way to New Orleans. Counting refugees, soldiers, and militia, the population tripled to 12,000. Mrs. Morris opened their home to ill and wounded soldiers and ministered to them herself.¹⁷

Demand for consumer goods grew greater than ever, but supply chains snapped in 1862 when Union troops occupied and blockaded New Orleans. While drugs and other essential items could be smuggled through enemy lines, such illicit trade was erratic and increasingly dangerous. Morris and other shopkeepers turned their eyes westward. In a classic logistical solution, they decided to reverse their transportation flow and put existing wagon routes to a different use. Rather than ship merchandise to Texas customers, they sought new sources of supply in Mexico and arranged to have goods hauled north. The journey from Mexico took three months.¹⁸

Merchant advertising nearly disappeared from the pages of the South-Western, resurfacing only for sporadic Just Arrived shipments. Morris ran such an ad on April 1, 1863, announcing receipt of twelve items, including calomel, quinine, morphine, chloroform, and cod liver oil.¹⁹

As the South’s largest remaining military command center west of the Mississippi, Shreveport became capital of the Trans-Mississippi West district. With Union troops occupying southern Louisiana, Confederate governor Henry Watkins Allen relocated the state capital to Shreveport. The fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July 1863 split the Confederacy, cutting off the eastern states from northern Louisiana and Texas supply routes.

Shreveport businessmen, with only occasional shipments, could not supply the needs of soldiers and government officials, much less private citizens. By 1864, shortages became critical, and the state government went into direct competition with the merchant class. Governor Allen reached out to blockade runners—he actually signed a trade contract with Shreveport merchant Edward Jacobs—and to Confederate sympathizers south of the Texas border. Heavily loaded caravans of as many as fifty wagons began arriving.²⁰

State stores sold to civilians some of the goods they acquired, including clothing, shoes, coffee, and medicine. Demand for certain drug items, however, remained greater than the supply. Allen established factories in nearby Bienville Parish to produce castor oil, carbonate of soda, medicinal alcohol, turpentine, and opium, the last made from the native Louisiana white poppy. Citizens benefited as well. They could purchase spare drugs from the state dispensary at one-third of the market price.²¹

In October, the governor canceled his controversial contract with Jacobs. Six weeks later, Morris and his wife raised $32,000 Confederate by the sale of property in Bossier Parish, and shortly thereafter he set out with Jacobs on a buying trip to Texas and Mexico.²²

Upon arrival in Matamoros, Mexico, in February 1865, he wrote to his wife, Mary White Sibley Morris. Speculative prices had fallen, Morris said, and he planned to purchase the bulk of his goods there rather than continue on to England, a trip that would consume another eight months and cost at least $1,000. Rumors of peace, he wrote, had cast a pall over some of the Matamoros businessmen. Since the war, large fortunes have been made here. He, on the other hand, would rejoice to hear of an honorable termination to the conflict. I think it has taught me to appreciate the blessings that once surrounded us.²³ Thomas and Mary were the parents of four young children, two daughters and two sons.

Shreveport, the last official outpost of the Confederate government, did not lower the flag until weeks after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s April 9 surrender. The first occupation troops arrived in early June 1865. The city had been spared shelling and devastation, but the economy was in ruins.

Riverboat traffic resumed, and downtown Shreveport was soon awash with goods. Previously prosperous merchant firms struggled to stay open, however. Most would-be customers had only Confederate dollars, worthless to them and to storekeepers.²⁴ Then began oppressive years of federal occupation and heavy taxes to pay for Union war debts—impetus, perhaps, for Morris’s next ill-fated business partnership.

Only a few months after surrender, the Internal Revenue Service levied on Morris a federal business tax—$9.17 as an apothecary—and $8.55 in luxury taxes for a carriage, a gold watch, pianoforte, and silverplate items. According to parish tax rolls, Morris had $10,000 in store merchandise and gross sales of $51,000, an amount that would have included income from his Mexico purchases. The following year Morris paid the IRS $50 as a wholesale liquor dealer and 5 percent tax on personal income of $3,312. The federal tax bite, including luxury goods, totaled $231.50.²⁵

Once again he took on a partner, this time fellow druggist W. B. Carlisle. Morris & Carlisle reported $15,000 in stock in 1867 and $26,900 in gross sales. A year later the partnership had dissolved, the company was in liquidation, and Morris was back on his own as sole proprietor, paying all taxes as a private citizen.²⁶

From this postwar low point, Morris’s business recovered as Shreveport’s economy found solid footing. Rail service expanded in north Louisiana. A regional timber industry took root, and cotton commerce revived, eclipsing its antebellum production. Credit still greased the wheels of business, but merchants now dealt with a new class of farmers—landless and often poor tenants. Crop liens became commonplace. A dual pricing system developed, with many shopkeepers charging more for goods bought on account.²⁷

Within a few years, Morris employed three salesmen and another druggist. Dr. R. A. Gray rented office space above the store at 28 Texas Street. Morris resumed buying trips, and in 1872 advertised a new selection of Christmas and New Year’s gifts acquired in New York City. Among them were cigar cases, toilet sets, and photograph albums. That year, he reported taxable property of $31,800, comprising land worth $16,800 and business investments of $15,000. His wife owned land valued at $8,000.²⁸

Morris was elected city trustee twice more, in 1869 and 1870. Along with other local businessmen, he backed the city’s first streetcar line, Shreveport City Railway Company, which harnessed mules to haul passengers.²⁹

Shreveport’s white citizens decried the political corruption of the postwar era and resented military occupation. They did enjoy a number of civic improvements, however, with the aid of state senator C. C. Antoine, a widely respected black politician. Among them were incorporation as a city, construction of a city hall, and creation of a modern police department. Antoine also sought statewide support for a charity hospital in Shreveport. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, undertook a massive new navigation project, to once again clear the Red River channel of fallen logs and debris and improve river commerce.³⁰

Shreveport’s population, which plummeted after war’s end, had rebounded by 1873 to roughly 10,000. Then catastrophe struck. In one of America’s most devastating epidemics, yellow fever claimed 759 lives in the city, plus scores more in the area.³¹

Within the first three weeks, more than 3,000 Shreveporters contracted the disease. The federal government ordered its occupation troops to withdraw to safety. Most of the remaining townspeople, mindful of the last local epidemic in 1867, fled to higher ground in the country. The streets were blocked with the fleeing citizens in every conceivable conveyance from an ox cart to a cotton dray, wrote former resident Lucy Paxton Scarborough in her memoirs. Many, unable to secure transportation, walked to the surrounding forests.³²

Schools closed, churches suspended services, merchants shut their doors. East Texas stopped westbound trains at the state line.³³ The Daily Shreveport