Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
PEDDLERS
PEDDLERS. Wandering salespeople. Peddlers usually traveled by foot, carrying their wares, or with a cart or wagon.Peddlers sometimes doubled as performers, supposed healers, or fortune-tellers.
Peddlers had an important role in supplying isolated populations even with basic and diverse goods such as pots and pans, horses, and news. In the United States, the era of the traveling peddler probably peaked in the decades just before the American CIVIL WAR. Advances in industrial mass production and freight transportation during the war laid the beginnings of modern retail and distribution networks. Increasing dense population, modern transport, mail order, refrigeration and other technologies have allowed even rural residents other ways of obtaining needed goods.