Clarence Saunders

Saunders was born on a farm in Amherst County, Virginia, to Abram Warwick and Mary Gregory. Saunders' mother died when he was five. Abram had served in the Confederate army under Stonewall Jackson but had struggled financially in the aftermath of the war. In 1891, his father moved the family to Montgomery County, Tennessee, where his father worked as a laborer and sharecropper on a plantation near Palmyra, Tennessee. Saunders worked the plantation as well throughout his early childhood. By age 11, he was also working in a sawmill and limestone kiln during the summer and at a general store during the holidays. He received only two years of formal education in Palmyra, before quitting school entirely at 14 to work full-time for the general store. Saunders worked a variety of occupations over the next five years throughout the region, including shop assistant, night watchman and sawmill laborer. Recognizing the need for further education to advance, Saunders became a prolific reader and autodidact. At age 19, Saunders had moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he started working in the wholesale grocery business for John Hurst and Joseph Boillin, rapidly rising in the business.

In Clarksville Saunders met Carolyn Amy Walker, the daughter of a prominent Illinois attorney. Despite their contrasting backgrounds, they were married on 6 October 1903. The following year they moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where Saunders took up positions working for the wholesale grocers Shanks, Phillips & Co, as well as William Cole Early. Memphis in this period was booming — the population had soared from 33,000 in 1880 to more than 100,000 by the time the Saunders' arrived. A major river point and railroad junction between the north and south, Memphis was a key distributor of goods to towns and cities throughout the region, whilst cotton merchants often served the dual role of selling wholesale supplies to farms and plantations as well, such that wholesaling was one of the largest industries in Memphis and one of its most lucrative.

In February 1913, he created United Stores, Inc., with 21 retail customers, giving Shanks, Phillips control of wholesale purchasing and advertising. A jointly owned United Store was opened in June 1914. Saunders' three children, Lee, Clarence Jr., and Amy Carolyn, were born in 1906, 1909 and 1912 respectively.

Clarence and Carolyn divorced on September 27, 1928, and Clarence married Patricia Houston Bamberg on December 20, 1928.

During World War II, Saunders made toy wagons, baby strollers and broomsticks.

He died of heart failure in 1953.