Thomas McBean and the First Drug Store in Chippewa Falls

Occasionally a topic of local history catches my fancy for reasons related to my past profession.  When I was a practicing physician I called in/wrote out a lot of prescriptions.  I got to know the area pharmacists reasonably well and became interested in the history of the small town drug store.  In our times an awful lot more pills are moving around the system but most are sold by mail in services or soulless Big Box outfits and we have lost something of our culture.   Back in the day the drug store was a place to pick up medicines of variable efficacy, get a fancy drink at the soda fountain, perhaps buy a few magazines and other small items.

Getting to the beginning of the pharmacy business in my little town is not entirely straightforward.  The best sources are archived newspapers and county histories and both have gaps especially in the early years.  But near as I can tell this was the first drug store in town:

Thomas McBean had an interesting line of wares.  Interestingly compounded prescriptions were one of the few things he did not advertise as being for sale.  Then as now drug stores made a large share of their profit from things other than prescriptions.  Patent medicines were very popular and profitable in that day and age.  Many of them were just fancy versions of the alcohol "for medicinal purposes" that were also a staple.

Note the date, January 26th, 1867.  We know the store was in existence earlier than that as the following "Business Card" ad goes as far back as the extant copies of the Chippewa Union Times run:  ALEX McBEAN PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON Offices at the Drug Store, Chippewa Falls, Wisc.  2y1.  The last notation is cryptic, I speculate that it means the ad had been running for two years, i.e. from 1865.  That would fit with the biography of the McBeans.   Notice that the reference is to "the" Drug Store.  While I can't exclude a small earlier enterprise it seems McBean had the field to himself by the mid 1860's.

Alexander McBean and Thomas were father and son.  The family moved to Chippewa Falls from, of all places, Jamaica.  The winters must have come as a surprise.  Arriving in 1856 they were true pioneers of the community.  Alexander was the first physician in the area.  Thomas was 13 and described as "a small boy in knee pants".  It seems he had a grand time growing up in a rough and tumble village that had perhaps 300 inhabitants on his arrival.  In later life he became a nostalgic historian and had his reminiscences of early Settler's Days published often in the local paper.

In the late 1850's McBean the younger clerked for H.S. Allen the pioneering timber magnate.  But with the outbreak of the Civil War both father and son enlisted in the Union Army.  Alexander was an Assistant Surgeon with the Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry regiment.  Thomas was a hospital steward in the same unit, no doubt working directly with his father.  It must have been a busy education, the official record of the Regiment indicates that during the war they lost 312 men.....288 of them to disease!  We tend to forget that non combat deaths in earlier conflicts outnumbered those caused by enemy action, especially in units such as the 2nd Cavalry.  They spent a lot of time patrolling and chasing irregular Confederate bands, very little in major battles.

When the Second Cavalry mustered out in Austin Texas in 1865 one assumes the McBeans returned home.  Three years spent as a hospital steward plus the direct supervision of his father were more than enough credentials to start a drug store circa '65 or '66.  As is often the case with early institutions the paper saw no need to give an address....everyone knew where the Drug Store was.  The store was probably on Spring Street.

Perhaps it was the improvised training, perhaps just the tendency in times past for Men of Prominence to wear multiple hats, but other than ads there is not much substance to McBean's history as a druggist.  He is known to have had a partner named Frank McElvey in the early days.  By March of 1867 McBean bought him out.  There seems by the way to have been a very early club of local Scotsmen in town....McBean turns up on the membership roster of this "Caledonia Club".

Perhaps reflecting his other interests Thomas McBean became County Clerk in 1869, and is said to have studied law although never to have taken the bar exam.  The drug store business was becoming competitive as 1870 approached.  An energetic new firm called Foles and Hinckley had arrived and another man named Leroy Martin had a store.  The picture with Martin is very unclear, McBean is said to have sold half his stock to Martin who then set up in direct competition.  Martin being a former dry goods and grocery proprietor did not thrive in the business and was gone by the early 1870's.  

 

In 1875 two things happened in close succession.  Thomas McBean opened a new store on Bridge Street "At the Sign of the Golden Mortar", and he again sold a portion of the business this time to H.S. Allen, the same man he'd worked for almost 20 years earlier.  This seems to be at or near the end of McBean's career as a druggist.  As the story of drug stores in Chippewa Falls subsequently gets a lot more complicated lets set it aside for now.

After his days as a druggist McBean pursued other interests.  He was prominent in the local Democratic party.  He used his legal training to assist his fellow Civil War veterans, on numerous occasions helping destitute old soldiers receive improved pensions.  Eventually he settled into a career in real estate with a particular interest in selling land in the northern parts of the state.  But there was still a sense of restlessness to his career.  On several occasions the papers reported that he was about to relocate to take up a new business situation but these generally did not come to pass.

Later in life both he and his wife began to have declining health.  It was at this point that he began writing extensively for the local paper, with spirited accounts of the early days of Chippewa Falls.  His memory seems quite clear, but as to the total accuracy of his stories, well its hard to tell when he speaks with the authority of "One of the Last of the Old Settlers".

Supposedly he was going to compile these into a history of the community but was unable to bring the project to completion before his death in 1924.  Proud to the end of his Civil War service he died in the Old Soldiers Home in Waupaca but was buried in Chippewa Falls.  His tombstone in Hope Cemetery is a simple one.  Just his name and HOSP. STEWARD 2 WI CAV.

We'll resume the history of early drug stores another day...

 

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