Alfred Marshall, the grocery store operator who founded the Marshalls department store chain almost 60 years ago, died over the weekend in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 94.
He had been selling wholesale cosmetics, baby products and other sundries out of his grocery store in Beverly, Mass., Ronald Marshall said, when he began buying out-of-season, irregular and overstocked inventory from fashionable clothing stores and selling it at a discount. By 1976, Marshall and three partners owned 36 Marshalls stores in New England and California
In 1976, they sold those stores to the Melville Corp., who grew the chain to nearly 500 stores and in 1995 sold them to TJX Cos. Inc. (Framingham, Mass.), the parent company of T. J. Maxx.
Marshall had worked as a contractor and welder before acquiring a fruit stand that eventually became the grocery store that led to the discount chain. The original location, in Beverly, closed as a Marshalls store and has since become a supermarket.