Sugar Land Texas Info, Fort Bend County Info, Homes, Business, Events, News, Schools

oday, we live in a supermarket world full of wide variety, mass consumption and fast pace. Consumers can purchase food imported from all over the world. With the exception of super-sized stores, shopping has become more specialized. Clothing is bought at department stores, tools at hardware stores, food at grocery stores, and so on.

Largely gone is the old general store that housed under one roof everything a consumer would need from apples to zoetropes. Sometimes general stores also included post offices or pharmacies. In many a 19th century town, the general store was a shopping and social center. Families could buy everything that they needed and didn ’t produce for themselves and talk with other families at the store, oftentimes over drinks also purchased at the store. This was often the only social interaction that rural families had as they were on their own most days, far away from the nearest neighboring farm or ranch.

The general store sold clothing, fabric, food, furniture, tools and more. Indeed, J. E. Dyer advertised that he was a dealer in dry goods, groceries, boots, shoes, hats, caps, hardware, willow-ware, tinware, crockery, notions, etc. Truly a wide variety was available at the Dyer Store on Morton Street in Richmond. The store ’s wooden shelves held notions, shoes, clothing, canned goods and other non-perishables, tools and hardware. Larger furniture, appliances, or farm equipment was special ordered to be delivered by horse-drawn wagon and later by train.

Gayle Snedecor remembered that his family “would go to Richmond, 20 miles away, for our food, clothing and drugs for the entire neighborhood. The settlers took turn about, one going one month and another the next. Usually the one to make the monthly trip went to all the neighbors a few days beforehand advising that his wagon would start to Richmond on a certain date, and he would get a list of purchases from each farm. The trip took from two to three days. ”

Early Richmond store owners were Thompson McMahon, Swen Swenson and the Blum brothers. One of the first businesses established in Rosenberg was a general store. Early stores there were operated by Randal Jones, W. B. Parrott and Benjamin Brown and the Woodward brothers to name a few. The Rabinowitz Brothers had stores in Richmond, Rosenberg and Beasley. A business directory from around 1899 indicates that 10 stores of general merchandise were open in Richmond alone, in addition to grocers, sellers of dry goods and meat markets.

Every time a town was established in the rural portions of the county a general store or sometimes several were sure to follow. Booth first began as a small store owned by Freeman I. Booth, who would name the town that grew around the store after him. A store was included in early Sugar Land when it was also known as the Cunningham Sugar Company. In 1891, August Schendel immigrated to Fort Bend County and opened up a store that was the beginnings of the town he later named Needville.

The general store was a center of life for early citizens of Fort Bend County. It was there that families purchased anything that they needed and where they heard the news of the day. A store put your town on the map. Today, going to the store is just another errand. The next time you travel to two or three stores in a day to purchase everything you need, remember the early pioneers that traveled two or three days to their one-stop shop, the old general store. l