Graybar is a wholesale distribution business, included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations. Founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1869, the company is currently based in St. Louis, Missouri. Graybar is a leading distributor of electrical, communications and data networking products and provider of related supply chain management and logistics services. During the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, an Entrepreneur named Enos Barton worked for Western Union in Rochester, New York. During this period, Barton met George Shawk, the foreman of the company's Cleveland, Ohio... shop. When that shop was closed down, Shawk bought some of the equipment and went into business for himself, making various kinds of electrical and other apparatus, including inventor's models. While on a trip to Rochester, he and Barton, who was then 26, agreed to go into partnership. To raise the $400 her son needed for his share of the business venture, Barton's widowed mother mortgaged her home. The new firm, located at 93 St. Clair St. in Cleveland, grew.
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