Caldwell County MO Archives History .....JOHNSON STORE SITE IN HAMILTON 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 8, 2008, 4:16 pm

THE JOHNSON STORE SITE IN HAMILTON
	Narrators:  Stewart Ogden and Others
    
     This corner site on Main street in Hamilton is rather an historic 
corner.  The fall of 1934, the Johnson chain store bought out the grocery 
store of Chet Martin, and this brought out quite a lot of discussion of 
business on that site.
     In 1906, F.A. Martin and brother C.A., bought the north half of block 21 
from George Rogers for $1300, the lot to be free from buildings.  A week 
later, they bought the west half of the south half of the same lot from M.J. 
Kinne for $2500, a site which was occupied by the brick building long known as 
the Spratt, Houston and Menefee Bank, the first and only building on that site 
up to 1906.  Then they purchased the east end of the same lot from Crockett 
and son, with their planing mill for $500.  That made the whole business 
street lot for the Martins, 44 by 120 feet.  On that lot, they erected the 
double store building long known as the Chet Martin grocery, and the north one 
third by the McMaster Hardware.
     But what a lot of history has happened on that lot!  First, the north 
half of the grocery store was the site of the first building in Hamilton - the 
old hotel-home of A.G. Davis; in turn it became the Claypool Hotel, Bishop's 
Drug store in the 70s and his drug compounding laboratory; McKenzie's Bakery 
in the 80s.  Eventually it was partly burned down and then being badly 
demolished, it was torn down.
     The corner half fronting on Main was first occupied by A.C. Cochran, 
Hamilton's first banker, whose daughter married John Spratt, a well to do 
farmer and town grocer.  Cochran turned the banking business over to him.  It 
was a private bank and was reliable.  Many early business men, lawyers and 
doctors, had office rooms on the second floor, and there was an outside stairs.
     To the east of this brick, probably the first building was that of T.H. 
Hare, photographer in Hamilton from 1869 on till his death in about 1915.  
Eventually however, Mr. Hare moved his gallery up stairs on south Main.  After 
he left this site, his old rooms became a butcher shop or meat market, as you 
choose to call it and Jacob and John Prough his son ran the shop.  It was also 
a meat market under others for short times.  Then it ran down terribly and 
came to be a residence for poor, often disreputable people.  It was a disgrace 
to the town and was finally torn down and the Crocketts erected their 
carpenter shop there.  That space now is the back room of the grocery store.
     In the office space above the old Davis hotel or Claypool Hotel in early 
days of the seventies, we would have found Dr. Tuttle, popular physician of 
the 70s and early 80s, Dr. King who was a buddy of Dr. Tuttle coming to town 
on the same day to take up the practice of medicine in a western town, Mrs. 
White who had dress making rooms there, and other local outstanding 
professional men of the day.  It was the leading corner for many a day.
     Interview  1934.


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