Albert Peter Berscht

1887 - 1974  (86 years)

• Name	Albert Peter Berscht
  Born	23 Dec 1887	Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [1, 2, 3, 4]
  Gender	Male
  Occupation	1911	Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [2]
  	Merchant
  Residence	1911	Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [2]
  	Lutheran
  Occupation	1921	Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [3]
  	Store Keeper
  Residence	1921	Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [3]
  	Lutheran
  Residence	1942	Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [5]
  Residence	1974	105 Onward Ave., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-52469
  Died	17 Mar 1974	Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [4]
  Buried	Woodland Cem., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [4]
  Person ID	I52469	Generations
  Last Modified	28 Jan 2025

  
  

  Father	Johannes "John" Berscht,   b. 16 Nov 1837, , Germany ,   d. 8 Jul 1916, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  (Age 78 years)
  Mother	Barbara Doersam,   b. 17 Jun 1852, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada ,   d. 5 Oct 1905, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  (Age 53 years)
  Family ID	F13518	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Ethel May Lederman,   b. 10 Sep 1897, New Hamburg, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada ,   d. 10 Jan 1988, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  (Age 90 years)
  Children	1. Marilyn Berscht   2. Elsie Berscht   3. Albert Franklin "Ben" Berscht,   b. 6 Jan 1922, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada ,   d. 30 Dec 2000, Freeport (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  (Age 78 years)
  Last Modified	29 Jan 2025
  Family ID	F60787	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  BERSCHT, Peter Albert - At St. Mary's Hospital, Sunday, March 17, 1974, after a brief illness, Peter Berscht, of 105 Onward Ave., age 86; a member of St. Mark's Lutheran Church; husband of Ethel Lederman; father of Franklin (Ben) Berscht and Mrs. Marilyn (George) Genzinger of Kitchener and Mrs. Elsie (Len) Savdie of Sault Ste. Marie; also seven grandchildren survive. Resting at the Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home, 621 King St. West, Kitchener. Funeral service will take place in the chapel, Tuesday at 1 p.m. with Rev. V.N. Cronmiller officiating. Interment Woodland cemetery ______________ (A native of Hespeler/Cambridge, John Shaw collected Waterloo County tokens in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time he also interviewed owners of stores in the region who used these tokens. Today he is a retired professional engineer living in Kitchener. While he no longer collects tokens, he would be interested in hearing from anyone who has knowledge of tokens not shown in his Waterloo County list. This short profile of one early 20th century merchant shows how Due Bills helped one innovative businessman run his store for 15 years in good and bad economic times.) The Berscht store in Wellesley was representative of country stores in rural and small town Ontario at the turn of the 20th century. It is useful in describing how and why a great many small general stores used 'Due Bills' and/or 'Trade Tokens'. Albert Berscht was born in Wellesley, Ontario on Dec. 23, 1887. (NB: The author interviewed Albert Berscht in 1970 and the information in this article is based on that interview.) At the age of 16 he obtained employment from William Kelterborn, the owner of the local general store. (NB: Wm. Kelterborn had already been using Due Bills in his business.) Initially he received two dollars per week for which he worked six days from 7:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. In 1911, Berscht purchased the business from Kelterborn. The store was located on the southeast corner at the main intersection in Wellesley. As Berscht had very little capital, Kelterborn accepted a chattel mortgage. In the very first year of business, Berscht paid off this loan and greatly expanded the business. (NB: Albert Berscht was some businessman! He reportedly made $19,000 profit in his first year of business, 1911-1912.) Because the business was conducted primarily in trade and credit, one of his first acts was to acquire his own Due Bills. On a good business day transactions would amount to a thousand dollars but only a hundred dollars of this would be in cash, the remaining being in trade and exchange for Due Bills. Farmers from the area brought in their butter, eggs, dried apples, other produce and commodities which they exchanged for whatever they needed. All this was recorded on the Due Bills. Berscht carried a complete range of stock to satisfy the majority of his customers' needs. He was listed as a general merchant on his Due Bills and sold groceries, dry goods, hardware, millinery, etc. In fact, Berscht claimed the only things he didn't have were beer and liquor, although he recalled one cold winter when he kept a barrel of whiskey for his drivers and customers. Berscht built the business rapidly by innovative marketing and shrewd buying, often purchasing extraordinary quantities. He regularly employed 12 people in his store and the payroll occasionally reached 18 at a time (c.1915) when the population of Wellesley Tp. was approx. 5,000. Berscht was the first are merchant to start the now well-known marketing technique of 'special' sales and he had handbills printed every month to advertise these sales. He frequently purchased railway carloads of peaches, cherries and other fruits from the Grimsby area. Once he purchased a carload of Palmolive soap cakes which quickly sold at prices below that of his competitors. Such volume buying and marketing is common today but was rare in Albert Berscht's time. One special that he always featured was bananas at 19 cents a dozen. Leo Longo, a leading wholesale fruit merchant in Berlin, sold the remainder of his bananas to Berscht each week after supplying the rest of the local merchants. By taking all that were left, Berscht frequently paid a much lower price than other merchants in Berlin and area who often sold bananas for as high as 40 cents a dozen in winter. Berscht occasionally lost a few cents with his banana offer but always had bananas available and realized a good profit from the extra business lured to his store by the always-inexpensive bananas. One indicator of the size, competitiveness and scope of Berscht's business was that he made two deliveries of groceries each week to customers in Berlin. During the First World War years, when sugar was scarce and illegal to hold in quantity, Berscht obtained four carloads at six cents per pound. He had one carload in the back of Wellesley's Queen's Hotel (NB: The Queen's Hotel, owned by Louis Schaub, issued and used its own trade tokens.) and unloaded one into the upstairs of his store where he knew government inspectors would never look. Berscht then sent the other two carloads to London where he couldn't be traced. Due to the shortage, the price of sugar rose to 29 cents per pound and, on the savvy advice of his banker, he rapidly disposed of the complete shipment in about two months' time. Shortly thereaftrer the price of sugar dropped drastically but by then he had made a substantial profit. Butter purchased from local farmers was packed in 50 pound barrels and a load was shipped every Monday to an ice car which stopped at the Baden railway station. Rancid butter was often shipped to Montreal for resale to Quebec lumber camps. Apparently the bushworkers were not too fussy about the quality of butter they ate! Good quality butter went to Toronto. Berscht could get an additional one cent per pound for butter that was moded in a print and wrapped in parchment. He could 'pring' 100 pounds on a Sunday afternoon which added a dollar to his weekly income, a significant sum in those days. Berscht also employed two boys just to pack eggs. They could pas as many as 30 to 40 crates per day with 30 dozen to a crate. Mr. Moore of Waterloo purchased the eggs at about ten cents a dozen and shipped them to Toronto. W.H. Millman of Toronto purchased dried apples every fall, paying one cent per pound above Berscht's purchase price, which averaged about four cents. Since the apples were sold by the pound it was profitable to make them as heavy as possible by soaking them in water before selling them. W.H. Millman acknowledged this practice and, in fact, soaked them again before shipping to Holland for the manufacture of dye. Poultry was trucked to Buffalo where Berscht sold it for less than he paid. However, he was paid in American dollars which were then at about a 20 per cent premium resulting in a tidy profit. This business was so successful that he purchased a second truck just for shipping poultry. For a while, Berscht kept a herd of about 20 fine Jersey cows on his farm as a hobby but found caring for them too time consuming and soon disposed of them. Albert Berscht used Due Bills right up until he sold the business on Sept. 30, 1925. His successor, William Kumph, did not continue the practice." WHS Vol. 97, 2009, "The Albert Berscht Store, Wellesley", by John Shaw

  
  

• Sources

  [S160] Census - ON, Waterloo, Wellesley Twp. - 1901, Wellesley E-6 page 23. [S504] Census - ON, Waterloo, Wellesley Twp. - 1911, Div. 11 page 7. [S2107] Census - ON, Waterloo, Wellesley Twp. - 1921, Sub District 11 Page 6. [S3231] Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208939459/p-albert-berscht. [S350] News - ON, Waterloo, Kitchener - Kitchener Daily Record 1919-1947, obituary of Elizabth Berscht - 14 Nov 1942.

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - 23 Dec 1887 - Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Occupation - Merchant - 1911 - Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Residence - Lutheran - 1911 - Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Occupation - Store Keeper - 1921 - Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Residence - Lutheran - 1921 - Wellesley Village, Wellesley Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Residence - 1942 - Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Died - 17 Mar 1974 - Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Buried - - Woodland Cem., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  = Link to Google Earth