John Josiah Newberry began his employment with the S.H. Kress 5 & 10 chain in 1899. In 1911, he resigned and -on December 26th- commenced operation of his first J.J. Newberry 5 & 10 store, in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The enterprise was incorporated, as the J.C. Newberry Company, in 1923. Its corporate headquarters was in New York City. 

In 1922, there were thirty-three Newberry units. By 1932, that figure had ballooned to 406. 492 units were in operation in 1942. This number had declined, to 477 stores, by 1952. However, there were J.J. Newberry operations in nearly all of the 48 states, this excluding Delaware, Nebraska and Nevada.

The eighty-three-unit Hested-Lee Stores chain -of Omaha, Nebraska- was absorbed into the J.J. Newberry Company in June 1960. Stores continued to operate under the Hested's or Lee's nameplates. Nineteen Hested's units did business in the states of Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. The sixty-four operated under the Lee Stores brand were in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota. With the Newberry-Hested-Lee merger, a coast-to-coast -48 state- variety store chain was established.

An upscale department store division of J.J. Newberry debuted in 1962. Known as Britts, it took the name of a Spokane-based dime store chain that the Newberry Company had absorbed in December 1928. The first seven Britts stores were located in Birmingham, Fort Lauderdale, Annapolis, Concord, New Hampshire, Newton, New Jersey, Binghamton, New York and Findlay, Ohio. At this time, the Newberry's-brand variety store count stood at 560.

United Stores, a thirty-unit Canadian chain, was purchased in April 1967. McCrory Stores acquired the Newberrys-Hesteds-Lee-Britts conglomerate in September 1972. Stores continued to operate under their respective nameplates. Hested-Lee stores were shuttered in early 1977. Britts closed down in January 1982. The Newberrys enterprise fared will for a time, but was in a downward spiral by the early 1990s. Waves of consolidation and shuttering followed. The remaining Newberrys units had gone dark by September 2001.

NEWBERRYS JUNIOR-ANCHORED SHOPPING MALLS:

*HILLSDALE CENTER, San Mateo, CA (1954)

*BERGEN MALL, Paramus and Maywood, NJ (1957)

*MISSION VALLEY CENTER, San Diego, CA (1961)