BRATTLEBORO — Last century many thought of Jason E. Bushnell as a bit of a “local character.” In 1900, when Bushnell was 19 years old, he opened a small grocery store on Flat Street. He bought the little building for $50, on leased land, and began with less than $120 to his name.
Bushnell grew up in Brattleboro and attended local schools. He then traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts to take a course at a business college. The small Flat Street grocery store was opened soon after. At the end of his first month of operations Bushnell had sold $33 worth of goods. People described him as a tireless worker, with a keen sense for making a deal.
In 1905 Bushnell married Florence Barber. Three daughters and three sons were born to them. Bushnell personally made local deliveries by horse and wagon. His business grew and, in 1915, he moved the grocery to the place where he was born, a building on Elliot Street. Bushnell was an energetic businessman and, in 1920, the store sold $100,000 worth of goods.
Chain stores came to Brattleboro in the 1920s and, by 1927, Bushnell saw his sales cut in half from their peak in 1920. Bushnell Grocery joined the Independent Grocers Alliance in 1929 to combat the competition of chain stores like A&P. The alliance of independent grocers was 8,000 members strong and found they could compete with chains because of their unified buying power.
Bushnell was a great storyteller and had a unique way of answering a question. Often, when a question was asked, it would cause him to remember a few other things and listeners would be entertained with the answer, plus a little more.
What follows is an example from a 1940 interview published in the Reformer. Bushnell was asked about his age and this was his reply: “I was born 60 years ago next December right where you see that pile of turnips in the store window. That was about the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. It has given me the chance to do all sorts of things that I couldn’t have done otherwise. For example, I wouldn’t have had the fun of selling those six porcupines the other day.
“You see, it’s like this, my wife and I were driving around Florida this winter, and we stopped at a rattlesnake farm. The owner was exhibiting a Florida porcupine and I said, ‘That’s all very interesting, but what you ought to have is a Vermont porcupine.’ Well, the owner asked how much it would cost and since I hadn’t sold any before I told him I’d have to let him know. When I got back to Brattleboro I asked a farmer what he would charge for getting me a porcupine. I took the farmer’s figure, added a little profit, and quoted the gentleman from Florida. He ordered six, and they’ve been shipped.”
Jason Bushnell was very civic-minded and held various public offices throughout his life. Here’s a partial list: Health Officer, Selectman, Police Commissioner, Tree Warden, Fence Viewer, Town Farm Manager, Overseer of the Poor, President of the Brattleboro Chamber of Commerce, President of the Vermont Retail Grocers Association, and Chair of the Windham County Boy Scouts of America.
Bushnell was an avid amateur historian and collector of antiques, oddities and curios. He was known to attend auctions and wait till the end of the night when unbought boxes of memorabilia would become available for bargain prices. He also liked to purchase the contents of attics and basements.
A 1955 article in Vermont Life magazine featured Bushnell’s collection and claimed he used three criteria to determine whether he would buy an item: was it odd, unusual, or old. If it met any of those criteria he would make an offer. The article went on to identify a few things found in the collection — a Chinese wooden carving of a Toucan, currency from Borneo, African ostrich eggs, Fort Dummer hatchet, Swedish machine for making ribbon candy, and various Abenaki artifacts found along Broad Brook and the Connecticut River.
Jason Bushnell loved history. Everything in his collection had a story, and he enjoyed preserving those stories for others. In 1942 he attempted to save a Civil War cannon and cannon balls that were on display at the Brattleboro Common. They were next to the Civil War monument and he was afraid they might be collected in a wartime scrap drive. He offered the town $5,000 to save the cannon and ammunition. This was 30 times the value of the metal that could be collected from the relics. Despite the offer, the cannon was claimed by scrap collectors and disappeared forever from the Common.
In 1946 Bushnell sold the grocery store to two of his sons. He moved his large collection of the “odd, unusual and old” to a three-story mill in Vernon. During his retirement years he turned the mill into a “museum.” Many people visited his collection. If he owned more than one example of an item, then the duplicate was probably “for sale.”
Jason Bushnell passed away in 1960. Unfortunately, his “museum” in the Vernon Red Mill was destroyed by fire in 1962. His family owned and operated the Bushnell IGA until 1971. In 2002 the Bushnell Building on Elliot Street was taken down to make room for the Brattleboro parking garage. Way back in 1852 the Lawrence Water Cure had operated on the site. Jason Bushnell’s printed business cards described him as a “Yankee Trader and Museum Owner.”
Dining and Cooking