Early Years

Samuel Moore Walton was born on March 29, 1918 to Thomas Gibson and Nancy Lee Walton near Kingfisher, Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, he lived and worked on his family’s farm. He grew up during the depression and knew the meaning of hard work and dedication. He started selling magazine subscriptions by the age of only eight years old to help with money because it was lacking on the farm making it hard to feed their family. The Walton's decided that the farm was not profitable enough to raise a family on. So, Sam and his family decided they would go back to being a Farm Loan Appraiser. Once this job started the Walton family moved out of Oklahoma and moved from town to town in Missouri. This would shake up most children but for the
This did not stop the very determined Sam from continuing with his dream. Before the sale was even finalized Sam had already started looking for a new place in town. He didn’t have much luck in finding a place right away until 1950, where he found and purchased a store in Bentonville, Arkansas, which ended up being called Walton's 5 & 10 (Wal-Mart Story). This store was also a member of the Butler Brothers' Ben Franklin chain. The place he bought required a great deal of improvements before it would be able to open, this did not set Sam Walton back, he jumped right in there and got the renovations finished.
In July of 1950, he introduced Walton 5 & 10. He staged his first sales advertising; called the "remodeling sale" and then the following March he had the grand opening. During this time Sam ran both the store in Newport and the one in Bentonville. In 1951, after his landlord took over the Newport store his family and him moved to Bentonville (Bickford 2). They made there selves at home in the community and became quite involved with town activities. Shortly after they arrived Walton already served as president of Rotary Club and president of the chamber of commerce. He was elected to the city council and served on the hospital board. He was again in his life well involved in the community and helped it out in many ways: one being he started a baseball league for little kids (Wikipedia Encyclopedia)