[From 1985 Town Report Historical Note: Strafford’s Stores. Current property owners and other updates indicated in blue.]

As two of Strafford‘s store buildings merit special mention this year —Coburns’ Store building having reached its 100th birthday in I985, and the old White Store in the upper village having been extensively restored —it seems fitting to present here a brief history of our main commercial structures.

Coburns’ Store, and the Brick Store in the upper village.

Although Coburns’ store building has evidently had various additions over the years, an old photograph showing the date “1885“ painted on the gable suggests that at least the main central structure goes back the full century to its construction by Howard C. Gilkey. In the 40 years before Gilkey bought the property in August I884, it had as many as seven owners, most of whom appear not to have engaged in commercial activity. The exception was Madison Alger, who had a wheelwright’s shop there in the l860s, probably using what earlier deeds refer to as a blacksmith’s shop. This is the land that Senator Morrill's grandfather, Smith Morrill, bought in I795 when he settled here. It was probably he who built and used the ﬁrst buildings on the property, where he was followed by his son Daniel and grandson Smith.

Gilkey‘s was a general country store, with tenements and storage areas in the upper ﬂoors. He appears to have been successful in business, and from l9l2 to I925 also ran the water-powered mill on the next property downstream. Local farmers would bring their grain there to be ground for animal feed, but he was chieﬂy known for his excellent stone-ground wheat flour, which people came from a distance to buy. Subsequent owners of the store have been the Varneys from I943, Richard Wilson and George Tidman (Strafford General Store) from l973, and Coburns’ General Store from 1977.

When George and Mabel Varney bought the present store from Gilkey’s estate, they had already had almost 20 years’ experience as merchants in South Strafford. Their first store had been in a brick building next to the red barn. Here George I. Varney started out as postmaster in I925 and soon decided to add a few grocery items. Earlier merchants in this building - built as a schoolhouse about I820 - had been P.A. Blanchard, J. M. Quimby, and S. B. Buell. The schoolhouse that replaced the brick one in I870 was the tall building across the road from it on the Downer Forest Road corner —-- close enough for its pupils to be good customers at the candy counter in the new store. The new sch—oolhouse had in turn formerly served as a store -- for, among others, Hiram Barrett, whose house and hotel adjoined it (now [Craig] and Newton School properties).

The Varneys‘ second store was in the present Wetherell building [currently owned by Tom Scull and Jessica Tidman], with their residence on the second floor. This building was originally erected on the other side of the highway, on the corner of the present [Melvin and Susan Coburn property] and as close as possible to the house on the next lot. It was built by B. Frank Quimby, who presumably had some score to settle with Frary. The building was probably much smaller at first as its assessment in the 1894 Grand List was $200, compared with $600 for Gilkey‘s store. Quimby lived in the [currently Christy] house and ran his store in this building for several years. Even after he bought a small piece of land across the road in 1895, he retained this property —and the store— until it was acquired by Frary, acting through a third party, in 1901. The store building and the shed attached to it were removed the following year - and presumably expanded and improved also, as the assessment increased to $475. Quimby continued in business in the building at its new location until 1920, when he sold it to Caleb Doolittle, who in turn sold it to the Varneys in 1925. The deed from Quimby to Doolittle includes a list of the complete store fixtures that provides a glimpse into that era; “1 set Detroit Computing Scales, 1 Coffee mill, 1 stove and pipe, 2 oval cases, 2 ﬂat cases, 1 upright case, 1 desk, 1 candy scale, and 3 large lamps." The Varneys kept the Quimby building for storage for many years after moving the store into the Gilkey building; the Wetherells bought it in 1970. In contrast to Gilkey‘s store assessment of $600 in l894, that of Frary’s “Brown Store” directly across the street was $1,100. Before it became Frary‘s alone, this store had been run by the partnership of Jedediah Harris and Frary, and before that by a series of other partnerships, including that of Harris and Morrill. After Frary, it passed to his daughter Gertrude and her husband Samuel B. Buell in 1905, and burned down in 1909. Buell afterward ran a small store in the same former brick schoolhouse where the Varney‘s would later start out.

Although Frary and other storekeepers stated in their “Business Notices” in Beers‘s Atlas of 1877 that they aimed to serve customers “(in) this and adjoining towns,” it seems likely that they would in fact have had only local traffic in their stores. The speed of travel in those days was such that a journey over even a short distance was time-consuming. It is clear from the diaries of Nathan Cobb that a trip from his upper- village home to the lower village could take up a good part of the day, and he would visit two or three establishments in order to make the journey worthwhile. Until comparatively recently, upper-village people had little need to go to the lower village, as there were stores closer to home to supply their wants. The Brick Store, as already mentioned in the I983 Town Report’s Historical Notes, was built in I834 for Jedediah Harris who had earlier had a store near the present Linehan House. In his lifetime, the store was run ﬁrst by Harris & Morrill, then by Morrill, Young & Company, and then by Royal Rollins, cousin to Harris by marriage. Following Rollins’s death, the store was leased and later purchased by H. C. Hatch & Co., a company formed by Henry Chandler Hatch and Royal Augustus Hatch, grandsons of the man who was probably the village‘s first successful merchant, Joel Hatch. Their father, Royal Hatch had for some years been in business in the White Store and their interest in the Brick Store was prompted in part by a desire to eliminate outside competition. H. C. Hatch ran the store, with uneven success, until 1888. The county gazetteer published that year lists Leckner, Udall & Co. as doing business as general merchants, and the same Udall would continue there until the late 193O‘s. Udall sold to Grace and Gordon Dunning, Dunning to Kimball, Kimball to the C. William Berghorns, and Berghorn‘s estate to Richard Montagu.

[Note: Subsequently, ownership of the Brick Store passed from Kendall Mix to Phoebe Mix. A post office was added and for a time the Strafford Historical Society was also a tenant.]

Brick Store with adjacent Hotel

It would appear that apart from a few brief periods between owners, business has been transacted there continuously since 1834.

If the building that [until recently housed] the restaurant “Stone Soup” is the General Smith’s store mentioned in a deed of September 1820, it may well be the town‘s oldest surviving store structure. Frederick Smith, Junior in 1805 married the widow of merchant and innkeeper Joel Hatch, who ran the inn in Daniel Robinson’s house [present Susan Cloke house] and Smith continued to run the inn there. Later, after buying the adjacent property, Smith ran the general store located where the Stone Soup [was] located. The present building does not appear to have belonged to Joel Hatch, as it was first leased and later sold to Joel’s son Royal by Frederick Smith. It was for Royal Hatch that the 15-year-old Justin Morrill first went to work—for six months and for his board only—but it does not now appear possible to establish whether that employment was in the [former] Stone Soup structure or not. From the estate of Royal Hatch, the property passed in 1863 to his sons, who had at that time been renting the Brick Store for about six years and planned to use the old store as storage space for the products of their bedstead factory, located behind the Town House. In 1872, however, mounting debts forced them to deed the White Store to two of their local creditors, who installed a tinsmith in it—competition in for the form of another general store being clearly not needed. Edwin V. Parker is listed in the 1877 Atlas as a “Manufacturer and Dealer in Parlor and Cooking Stoves, Tin, Sheet Iron and Copper Ware, Pumps, Lead Pipe, Zinc, etc.” Listed as his specialties are tin roofing, sap pans and buckets in their season, and putting up eaves troughs and conductors. The 1888 gazetteer, however, lists him as a dealer in boots, shoes and rubbers.

In 1902, Parker sold the White Store to Chester B. Dow, who had long had an interest in the property and who may have been in business there already, being postmaster for various terms from 1872. Dow had earlier been in business in the former Barrett store in South Strafford, but after that building became a schoolhouse he moved to the upper village (present Dycus house), where he established a commercial greenhouse. Those who carried on enterprises of one kind or another in the White Store after Dow include Henry Fox, John Dana Gove, Norman Rhodes, Richard Titus, Richard Root (all with general stores) and John Essex (real estate), Tidmans (the original Stone Soup), Liz Trott (cross-country skis), and Vermont Artisans (arts and crafts). Alternations were made to the building over the years, the most striking being the change in the front entrance and the installation of large storefront windows. [Former] owners, Gil Robertson and William Milne, carried out a painstaking restoration. Among other things they brought back the earlier type of small-paned windows and restored the front door to its original location, having the windows custom-made to match the surviving attic window and the doorway built in accordance with details visible in the turn-of–the-century photographs—a restoration fully worthy of this attractive building and its location. [Note: Current owners are Rod and Anya Smolla.]

[Note: The Strafford Historical Society’s collection of Town Report Historical Notes from 1981-2020, REFLECTIONS: On the History of Strafford, Vermont, is available at Coburns’ Store, along with STRAFFORD: An Album of Early Photographs, a collection of over 200 vintage local photographs.]

The history of Strafford’s stores

Maybe Samuel Pennock knew his time was growing short