Inside Stewards Mill Store
This page is the result of the gracious assistance of Jo Watson Turner, who helped us so much in our travels to Stewards Mill and, among other things, gave us the name of the current owner of the store, and Andy Bonner, current owner of the store, who generously took the time to meet us at the store and let us wander around inside. It was a long-awaited treat. The original counters and bins and much of the early merchandise is still in the store. (All photos taken Sep 2002)
Coils of rope were stacked behind the counter and fed through openings in the front. The 2 side walls are covered with shelving for merchandise display, along with the glass topped counters.
Note the items made of cast iron - such as the old irons, teapots and frying pan.
Hanging from the ceiling is an old ox yoke. Other large farm implements were hung from the ceiling.
More glass topped cabinets and shelving on the back walls. Unfortunately, I ran out of film, but among the items displayed in this cabinet are old-fashioned children's high topped boots with button fasteners.
More counters and an old sewing machine.
An old abacus, originally from the store. Currently the property of Jo Watson Turner.
Button collection from the store. Currently owned by Jo Watson Turner. Jo said she had these buttons dated and some of them originated from circa 1813.
HOW CLOTHES WERE ORDERED FROM THE STORE
The following is from Jo Watson Turner of Fairfield, TX.
The store contained a large book that included patterns and swatches of material. A person would pick out a pattern, then the material they wanted the garment made from, then send off the request along with their measurements. The order was returned with pieces of fabric, cut out in pattern style, made in slightly larger pieces then the measurements that were given in the case of an error, along with instructions to complete the garment. The women would then be able to "test" the pieces by holding them up to the person and making adjustments as required. There was a Miss Maggie Pugh who came to visit relatives in the area, and was quite a seamstress. She ended up staying there for 11 years, spending anywhere from a few days to 6 months with different families to do the family sewing. The books no longer exist. An ancestor of Jo's took the books many years ago and made a quilt out of the fabric swatches. It is on display in the Freestone County Museum in Fairfield, Texas. I have seen it on my visits there, but didn't know the significance of that quilt until Jo shared this story with me. Linda Walker 2002
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Old Stewards Mill Store
The following article is from "The History of Freestone County, First Edition", published by the Freestone County Historical Commission, pp. 152-153. I have been told it was a newspaper article, but don't know what newspaper or the date of publication.
The vine-covered and
weathered Stewards Mill Store in Freestone County is perhaps the most casual
museum in Texas. Tucked among the
cans of peaches, loaves of bread and bottles of aspirin are sample shoes from
the 1860s, coal oil lamp globes, ironstone ware, hobbles for horses, a sausage
press and countless other items of interest and value.
All of the items are on display, among the hoop cheese and the summer sausage, and most of them are sitting on counters, so they can be picked up and examined by visitors. The store is owned by descendants of the partners who established it in 1867.
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Bragg
have owned and operated the store for 15 years.
Mrs. Bragg and her sister, Mrs. L. G. Daugherty of Fairfield, are
great-great granddaughters of Washington Steward’s wife, who with is son,
Jerry T. Steward, and Dr. James I. Bonner built the store.
A sign above the store reads
“Bragg’s Gro.”, but most of the residents still call it Stewards Mill
Store.
The Braggs do have customers
who want to buy groceries. For
instance, Bragg estimates he sells each week about 25 pounds of hoop cheese, an
aged Wisconsin cheddar. But, many of
the customers are tourists who have heard about the store and have taken a
detour off U. S. Highway 75 to see it. And,
of course,the regulars who come to sit on the sagging front porch to play
dominos and talk. They are there
nearly every day.
The tiny community is about
seven miles northeast of Fairfield. It
can be reached by turning east on Farm Road 833 off U. S. Highway 75.
The store is about five miles east of the highway.
Inside, the dark store is
cooled by a gently whirring ceiling fan. The
walls are bedecked with old advertisements for such items as “Dr. LeGen’s
Poultry and Stock Prescriptions – Results Guaranteed”.
P. C. Whitaker’s commission in the army of the Republic of Texas,
signed by Gen. Sam Houston, hangs in their midst.
Mrs. Bragg and Mrs. Daugherty,
with evident price, show the tools, the child’s brass-toed shoes, a sunbonnet,
an ironstone soup tureen and turkey platter, like those sold in the store’s
early days.
None of the antiques are for
sale. Mrs. Bragg says, “Some of them get real disgusted when we
tell them. But they are just not
for sale”
Some family heirlooms are
displayed on the glass-covered shelf of an old-fashioned square wooden ice cream
table in the middle of the store. The
table has four round swing-out stools.
The heirlooms include a $5
gold piece, pieces of silver made from silver dollars, a mustache cup and a lace
bonnet, which belonged to the grandmother of Mrs. Bragg and Mrs. Daughtery.
The cabinets, bins and
counters are those placed in the building in 1867 when the store was built at a
cost of $536.20, complete. An
addition in 1875 brought the total cost to $726.20.
The two sisters, whose maiden
name was Watson, have at the store the nearly complete records of the store
since business was started.
An entry in a ledger dated
1869 was the one the domino players urged Mrs. Daugherty to show.
There was much knee slapping, guffawing and speculator over why one
man’s account was a long list of “one quart of whiskey”, et cetera.
He ordered a few other items.
Some other entries in the
books include one pair of shoes for wife, $1.75, six pounds of coffee, $2.00,
one bottle of morphine, 75 cents, two coffins, $25.75, and 26 gallons of syrup,
$10.
Other records were kept more
casually. For instance, one entry
in May 1870 day book shows simply “Ike quit the mill today.”
The weather records were kept,
oddly enough, on the outside walls of the unpainted store.
The inscriptions give information like “Feb. 13, 1899, Down to Zero.
A side room houses the old
post office boxes used at the Stewards Mill store.
Incidentally, when the community got its post office the spelling of the
town was unaccountably changed from Steward’s to Stewards.
That same side room also has a
huge safe, which now contains many documents such as land deeds.
Mrs. Bragg says a student working on a master’s degree in Texas history
told her he thinks the store was also one of the state’s first banks. “If it was a bank, I guess that safe was it,” Mrs. Bragg
says.
The store also was headquarters for the first telephone exchange in Freestone County.
The first establishment at the site was a grist mill, operated by Washington Steward. It was the only such mill between Houston and Dallas.
Mrs. Bragg says, “Mother
said people used to come and camp out for as long as three weeks waiting to get
their turn at the mill.”
But, in one of the last skirmishes of the Civil War, the Yankees burned the grist mill to the ground. IN 1867, Steward and his partners rebuilt the mill and built the store.
All this history is why
Stewards Mill Store was presented with a Texas Historical Survey Committee
medallion and marker in 1964.
The question of making sure
the store and its contents, many of them valuables, are preserved is one that
concerns the Braggs and Daughterys.
“We don’t know what we will do with it yet, but we want it to be taken care of.” Mrs. Daughtery says.
