About our store and family
Welcome to Winglemire Furniture, where we have been serving our customers for 165 years. We take pride in being one of Michigan's oldest sesquicentennial businesses. Our priorities are customer satisfaction and a friendly business sense. We want to help you, "Feather your nest with a little down."
The Winglemire family has been synonymous with furniture and the village of Holly since 1858. It was then that Joseph and Christine Winglemire moved into town and set up shop. Like many other furniture-makers of the 1800's, Joseph also worked for a time as an undertaker and had two matched black horses to pull a hearse.
“Original furniture store now located at 107 N. Saginaw St., Holly. John Winglemire pictured in Model T truck and approximate time frame 1915-1920. ”
Customers can see the quality of work that Joseph built which is on display in an area off the main showroom in the store. Joseph sold furniture from his home until 1865, when he built a store on N. Saginaw Street in Holly, which is still in existence under the name Joseph's Oak and Kitchen Shop. Joseph and Christine had three sons: John went into the family furniture business, Jake went into the business in Fenton, and Joe ran a grist mill and the company's furniture shop in Holly. The grist mill and Holly shop were phased out in the early 1900's. John Winglemire's son Maurice took over after John died in 1926.
Maurice came up with the slogan the store still uses: "Let Winglemire's feather your nest with a little down." Maurice died in 1943, the year that his son Don graduated from high school, and his widow, Edna, took over the operation of the store. Edna continued to work at the store until her death in 2003. Don came home from the war in 1946 and went into the family business where he continued to work until his death in 2017. Don's wife Hazel took care of their four children while Don ran the store. A fifth generation of Winglemires work in the business: Don Winglemire's son John is General Manager and daughter Penny Raupp is a buyer and bookkeeper.
Front of furniture store in 1957 (picture 1 & 2)
Delivery truck in 1947 (picture 3)
Our 155th Anniversary
John, Don, and Penny celebrating the store's 155 anniversary of being in business.
John, Don, and Penny.
