Overlooked No More: Margaret Getchell, Visionary Force at Macys

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In 1860, Margaret Getchell traveled to New York to introduce herself to a distant cousin — Rowland Hussey Macy, the founder of R.H.Macy’s.

She was just 19 years old, and she was hoping he would give her a job.Macy had opened his Manhattan department store two years earlier, and was selling an assortment of gloves, hosiery and millinery.Getchell had a facility with numbers, so Macy hired her as a cash clerk.She excelled, and before long was training other clerks.

Within three years, she was promoted to head bookkeeper.But it was her ability to anticipate customers’ wants and needs that helped transform R.H.Macy’s into what it is today....