Mr. Stafford Sands, the creator of City Market Foodstores, was the third son of the Hon. Sir James Patrick Sands (1859 – 1925) and Lady Sands.
Sir James P Sands himself was a foodstore man on Bay Street, but nothing on the scale of success that his son Stafford would achieve with City Markets. James Sands founded a grocery/lumber store near Rawson Square in Nassau. The store opened its doors in 1882. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sands-1710
Mr. Stafford Sands married Enid Lofthouse in 1912. Enid was the daughter of the Hon. Thomas Hilton Cheeseborough Lofthouse.
Lofthouse was a member of the Legislative Council and a Bay Street merchant.
Stafford Sands and Enid Lofthouse Sands had one child, a son, his name was Stafford Lofthouse Sands.
Mr. Stafford Sands was an accountant and banker. He got an early job with Royal Bank of Canada, at some point after it first opened in Nassau, in 1908. From there, Sands went on to become manager of Royal Bank of Canada’s branch in Dominica and in Jamaica beginning in 1919. He was manager at these Caribbean branches for a couple of years. This meant, wife Enid Sands and their young son, Stafford, were left in Nassau.
Mr. Stafford Sands’s only child, a son named after him, would go on to become Sir Stafford Sands, credited as the Father of the modern Bahamian economy. This Stafford would change The Bahamas in ways that could scarcely be imagined and would have a life some can only dream about.
City Market was a success for Sands. By 1965, there were 11 stores across Nassau and Abaco. His son, sold his father’s legacy, City Market to American supermarket chain Winn Dixie in 1967.
