Photo Gallery
Notes
The Seering & Berkhahn grocery in Bonduel
From the Joy Seering Werner collection, here’s a photo of the inside of the Seering & Berkhahn grocery in Bonduel in 1908. This photo has incredible detail and shows how grocery stores were organized around 1900, before national chain stores like IGA or A&P started to make an impact in rural Wisconsin communities.
In grocery stores at the time, you didn’t pick up your own items, the clerks helped you with that task. If you look at the photo, most of the goods are behind the counter. You would ask and point to an item and the clerk would get the item. Notice the fresh bananas and other fresh vegetables. If you look closely, you can see the prices on the items. The are items in this photo that we still have in our pantries today….notice the Quaker Oat boxes on the upper right for 23 cents. Also, they are selling oleomargerine……very controversial in the dairy state.