Grocery Stores of The Past

Truly a thing of the past, the little groceries stores of years ago.  How I miss the old county grocery stores.  There used to be several located in all the little communities in our county.  All you would need you could find at these stores.  So wonderful to have grown up during the time that these communities and grocery stores were alive and doing well.

Here are some that were located in the small community of Crayne, my hometown.

Dorroh Bros. store was located near the railroad track on the northern end of our community.

James Franklin Dorroh came to Crayne and went to work for  Mr.Hugh Glenn.  He soon purchased the building and stock of good, and he spent his life in this business.

Later his sons and daughter operated the business from around 1892 to the late 1940's.

Pictured left to right:  Eugene and Robert Dorroh. 

 

This is the Brown's General Store, Walter and Lois Brown.

 Dully Baird is resting on the bench.

Those wonderful old wooden store benches, what memories they bring back. 

This building burned in 1959. 

One of the grocery stores that Crayne used to have was the Myers Grocery.  It was owned and operated by Allie and Mary Emma (Dorroh) Myers.  The block building was built in 1960, on the location of the former Dorroh's Store.  The inventory consisted of groceries and some hardware.

This is a picture of the store in 1961.  In the picture are left to right: Henry Ordway, Allie Kirk and Mr. Allie Myers, owner of the store.

Later they sold the inventory to a Mr. and Mrs. Locket Nunn of Sturgis.  in 1964 Mr. and Mrs. Nunn moved the store inventory to old Kuttawa.

Some Fluorspar History from Crittenden County in 1902

(1902)

The Kentucky Fluor Spar Company is the only company in America that is able to fill their contracts and orders at the time specified.  Located near the depot at Marion in close access to the railroad.

The three great reserve dumps at Marion, at Mexico and at Crayneville, on the Illinois Central Railroad, enable the company to do this.  Good weather, bad weather, or muddy roads make no different.  Scores of teams and wagons do the hauling to the railroad and hundreds of men are at work in the mines.

The Eagle Fluor Spar Company of Wheeling W. Virginia have a great vein of this spar gravel in their Asbridge mine, situated near Mexico station.  The mining and raising of their product is carried on systematically and economically and a large tonnage is shipped for fluxing purposes.

The Crittenden County Lead, Zinc and Fluor spar company own lands in the immediate vicinity of the well known Memphis mine, a great producer of the best kind of grinding fluor spar. 

Located three miles west of Frances on Claylick Creek was the Riley Mine.  

(1905)  Very few people of Marion are aware that one of the best-concentrated zinc plants in this country is within a two hour ride by buggy from Marion.

  The concentrating plant is on an eminence several hundred feet above the territory surrounding it and here the shaft, 174 feet deep has been sunk and around about it has been erected a plant the equal of any in America.  

At present hundred of tons of ore rough, are on the dumps and also many tons of crushed ore and concentrates.    One feature of the plant is the reservoirs, two of which are located at the mill on the hill, and one in the creek with a depth of 9 feet, which two steam pumps throw the water to the reservoirs on the hill.

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Did you know that Crittenden  County sent a very large mineral exhibit to the great 1903 World's Fair that was held in St. Louis?  It must have been an  impressive sight  to behold.

In the exhibit ores, forwarded by Blue & Nunn from the "Old Jim" mine were two huge lumps of sulphide of zinc, each weighing over 3,000 lbs., the two aggregating 3 tons; also one immense piece of mixed galena was sent weighing over 1,000 lbs.

The exhibit carload also contained a most impressive lot of choice fluor spar, as well as typical grades of fluor spar, several different colors of purple, blues, yellows and white, some of them weighing more than a ton each and are beautiful to look upon in their pearly luster.

(What a treasure of history we would have if only some pictures of this wonderful load of Crittenden County minerals had been taken and saved at the World's Fair of 1903.)

Geneva Dycus bids good-bye to her home in Dycusburg in 2001

Geneva Cooksey Dycus shared some memories of her home in Dycusburg that she had spent 93 years in.  She was born in this home. She had decided that due to some health problems she needed to give up her family home and move to an apartment in Marion.

She had lived in the house almost her entire life.  She moved to teach for several years but otherwise she had lived in the Dycusburg home.  After her husbands' death in 1946, and her daughter moving away in the early 1950s, Dycus had lived alone.

I've lived a wonderful life here.  Dycusburg is the greatest place to me, she said.

Mrs.  Dycus said she wouldn't have a hard time adjusting to life in town, she remembers when Dcusburg was a booming river town.

We had five grocery stores, an ice cream parlor and many other businesses.  

She also remembers when boats would dock in Dycusburg, many of the deckhands would come up to her house.  Hr parents and others would play music and they would dance way into the night.

She has had many positive memories of her home, however, there have been two unfortunate occasions when the home was broken into.  But despite these break-ins, she has never been afraid to live there.  

The home was built in 1857 by Mrs. Dycus' grandparents, Theopolis and Harriet Jacob Cooksey.  Then it became the home of their son and Mrs. Dycus' father, Robert P. Cooksey and family.   

Geneva Cooksey Dycus and husband Mark Dycus was deeded the home in Oct. 1936 by Mr. Cooksey.

Mrs. Geneva Cooksey Dycus, didin't live long after she moved to Marion, only a few months later she died Oct. 16, 2001 and is buried next to her husband in the Dycusburg Cemetery.