Richard Warren Sears and Sears, Roebuck, & CompanyRichard Warren Sears was born on December 7, 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota. He was the son of James Warren and Eliza A. Sears, both of English descent. His father led anything but a happy life. He had failed in his search for gold during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and was a die-hard soldier in the Civil War, which he blamed on politicians. He had earned a considerable sum of money working as a blacksmith and wagon builder, but had lost it all in a ranching venture. Richard's father gave up soon after, leaving Richard to be the family's breadwinner at age 16. Richard worked in the general offices of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway in Minneapolis to support his family. He then decided to move to RedwoodFalls, Minnesota, where he thought he could make more money due to the small-town environment. There he worked as a station attendant, doing odd jobs for his pension and sleeping in the train station's mezzanine. In his spare time he learned how the mail order business worked. Richard had an opportunity to enter the mail order business in 1886 when a shipment of watches from a Chicago wholesaler was rejected by a jeweler in the city. Therefore, the shipment sat at the train station until Richard contacted the wholesaler, who offered him the watches for twelve dollars each. He bought the watches and sold them by sending letters to other station workers describing the watches and offering them at the discounted price of fourteen dollars each. He sold those watches and ordered more to sell. To sell them he placed a small advertisement in the St. Paul newspapers. He profited greatly from this operation. Within months Richard made such a profit that he abandoned the railroad business entirely and started his own mail order business under the name RW Sears Watch Company. Within a year he made so much money that he was able to start advertising in national magazines and move the business to Chicago. On March 1, 1887, he opened a store on Dearborn Street in Chicago with a staff of three. , one to manage accounting and correspondence and two stenographers. Soon after opening his new store, he noticed the need for a watchmaker to repair watches returned by customers. This watchmaker was a young man named Alvah Curtis Roebuck of Hammond, Indiana. Richard Sears was even more successful by opening the huge rural market.