Pike-Coffee-Geneva County AlArchives History .....The Myers Store At Josie, Pike County - 1891 To 1919 - And Successor Stores In Coffee And Geneva Counties ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Alice F Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008183 November 17, 2015, 7:17 pm THE MYERS STORE AT JOSIE, PIKE COUNTY – 1891 to 1919 and Successor Stores in Coffee and Geneva Counties By Alice Folmar Kelley The Myers Store at Josie in Pike County, AL, was first owned and operated by my great-great-grandmother Rachel Ann Howell Myers and her youngest son Elijah Elisha Myers, the only child who was still living at home. The store, called a store house, was about 10 miles from Banks Station and 20 miles from Troy, according to Rachel’s grandson Oscar Galileo Myers. The Myers home was directly across the road from the store. Rachel Ann’s husband Ira Myers had died in 1887, so that Elijah, their 15th child who was 17 years of age, took responsibility for helping his mother with the family farm. Elijah also began stocking a few items for sale, mostly for the convenience of their farm laborers. [Rachel Ann Howell Myers was the daughter of Ephraim and Mary Matilda Dubose Howell; Ira Myers was a son of James B. Myers and first wife (unknown).] When two Austin brothers built the Loflin Church building in Josie in the Spring of 1891 – the church where Elijah was a member – he bargained with them to erect the store house for him and his mother. Thus the Myers Store was built and began doing business in the Summer of 1891. A good trade was established over the next few years. Elijah, described as a fine young man, married Ida Boyd in 1894. They had one daughter, also named “Rachel Ann,” who died around age three or four – and Elijah died at age 27 in 1897 from typhoid fever. Rachel Ann, together with Elijah’s widow Ida who lived with her, continued operation of the Myers Store. They could not handle all the work of store and farm alone, as Rachel Ann was aging and easily tired by that time in her life. Another son of Rachel and Ira – John Baptist Myers, the youngest living child – moved his family back to Pike County from Barbour County, and Rachel hired him to help with the store and farm for $15 per month. She hired two young Forehand boys at the same time for $5 each and board. A near neighbor, Tom Johnson, offered to help by taking chickens and eggs to market on his wagon trips to Union Springs and Troy. John Baptist’s son Oscar told in later years that the roads at that time were exceedingly rough and it took 12 hours for his dad John to get to Banks Station and 24 hours to get to Troy. John would make the trip in two days to get supplies and fertilizer, spending the night in the wagon yards in Troy. Next to the store, according to Oscar’s wife Lennye Davis Myers, there was a small seed house where John kept cotton seed to feed the cows and to plant. Rachel and Ida, with John’s help, operated the store for just over a year until the women’s lives abruptly ended. On December 17, 1898, someone entered their house during the night and stole gold, silver, and currency from a trunk. The robbers brought in an axe from a separate kitchen behind the house and first struck a farm employee, John Cook, who boarded in a back room. Rachel was also attacked, as well as Ida, about 21 – said to have been a beautiful woman with long black hair to her waist. The house was set on fire with kerosene from the store. Although John Cook was able to pull the women from the burning house, Ida died that night, and Rachel died December 20 on her 70th birthday from a horrific head injury. Neighbors just down the road from the Myers, Richard Hale and the Tom Johnson who had offered his help on occasion – and also Sam Rivers of a near area – were soon arrested and convicted of the murders and were hung in Troy on March 31, 1899. Evidence in the case included testimony by Rivers and one of the store’s five-dollar, metal dime cases recovered from him. Rachel had been known to keep her store receipts in the house, as she had frequently gone to the house from the store to get change for customers. John Baptist Myers inherited his mother’s 40 acres of land, the Myers Store, and a few goods and weighing scales. He built a house for himself and wife Rosella (Ella) Taylor Myers and children on the site where his mother’s had been and restocked the store. Ella helped with planning and ordering goods, some of which came from Baltimore Bargain House. Son Oscar, around 13 at the time, helped them in the store as well as with house and farm. John operated the Myers Store until the Summer of 1919, when he sold house, store house, and land to a Haisten man of Josie and moved his family and store goods across Pike County to the County Line community just inside Coffee County, where he opened another Myers Store across the road from the family home. At the time of the Josie store closing, John’s books were full of unpaid accounts, where he had allowed credit. Perhaps the store closing was a result of the boll weevil’s destruction of crops over the previous years, both his own and his neighbors’, which thusly affected his store sales and his ability to collect what was already owed to him. Perhaps the loss of friends in the influenza epidemic of late 1918 contributed to his desire to close up and move. The Myers store and home were located on current Pike County Road 6628. Originally across the road from the house, the store building was moved to the opposite side of the road when the road was paved in later years. It was set back from the road and was never leveled. Oscar Myers wrote to his niece Kathlyn Johnson Folmar on February 11, 1970 about this site where his grandparents and parents had each built a house: “My Daddy’s old home at Josie burned last Sunday morning … Papa, Mr. Davis [W. E. (Bill) Davis, Oscar’s father-in-law], & Alonzo Brooks built our home – the old nails they drove are now in the ashes. …” Later, someone put a mobile home at the site of the two burned Myers’ homes. Family could always identify the site by the old magnolia tree split at the bottom which remained through the years. Myers descendants have preserved several items from Rachel Myers’ store and home. These include a J & P Coat’s wooden thread box, one of the five-dollar dime banks or cases, a sugar bucket, and the dinner bell rung the night of Rachel and Ida’s murder. The bucket was repaired at some time by Wilbert Folmar, whose wife Kathlyn was a great-granddaughter of Rachel and Ira. A drawer of the thread box contains a thick lock of black hair that is very likely that of young Ida Myers. The Myers store opened by John at County Line was very soon purchased by his son Oscar. Oscar had worked in the Mobile ship yards during WWI and earlier had graduated from University of Alabama, had been a school teacher and bookkeeper, and had married Lennye Davis of Josie. About 1921, John asked to repurchase the store due to bad crops and poor income from farming. Oscar agreed and went in search of a new store location for himself and purchased an unfinished structure on Main Street in Samson, Geneva County, AL. By the next year, he had his store set up and moved to Samson together with wife Lennye and their first child Essie. Oscar called his purchase his iron-clad store, because it was made of tin. Later in the 1920’s, he bought at auction an old drug store building just down the street – on the corner of Main and North Ripley and a little nearer the center of town than the tin store. This became the department store he called his No. 1 Store. The sign out front read, “O. G. Myers Dry Goods, Shoes, Ladies Ready to Wear.” In 1938, the tin store was torn down and replaced with a brick building, which became Oscar’s No. 2 Store and where he sold groceries and dry goods. The sign read “The Snow White Store, O. G. Myers Groceries.” In 1950, he had a second brick building erected next to the first one and divided it into two units, each of which he leased to other businesses. Oscar and Lennye retired from merchandising and retailing in 1965 when they closed their department store after almost 45 years in business in Samson. That was the last of the Myers stores. Oscar’s store signs now hang in the garage of his son Neil Oscar Myers in Aiken, South Carolina. It is not known when John Baptist Myers closed his store at County Line. He died in 1950, Oscar Galileo Myers in 1979, and Lennye Davis Myers in 1988. END Additional Comments: Story was written from family accounts. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/pike/history/other/myerssto429gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 9.0 Kb