McCrorey's - Downtown Johnstown

 

	J.G. McCrorey Store located along Main Street in Downtown Johnstown.
John G. McCrorey was the founder of the McCrory Five and Ten Cent store chain. Born in East Wheatfield Township, Cambria County, Pennsylvania in 1860, he moved with his family to Cumberland County while still a boy. He returned to Johnstown, Pennsylvania at age 18 and began working in retail stores. Four years later, at age 22, he opened at Scottsdale, Indiana County, Pennsylvania the first of what would become hundreds of McCrory chain stores - he later dropped the "e" in his name because it was cheaper to have signs printed up that way. His stores would come to be considered the second of the great five-and-dime chain stores founded at the end of the nineteenth century, following F.W. Woolworth (1879) and preceded those of S.S. Kresge (1899). The latter chain was later renamed K-Mart. He is interred in the family mausoleum at Grandview Cemetery, above whose entrance is inscribed "McCrorey," the original spelling of the family name.