Time for another photo match-up. Actually, the example photo showing a vintage street scene is in color, not the usual sepia ones that Sepia Saturday shares. That gives me more options to find a similar scene in our family photo stash. Let’s see what I find.
Sepia Saturday Theme Image, Lincoln, Nebraska, in Colour
First I found an old grocery store in Tyro, Kansas. My Vining and McGhee branches of the family lived there, as did some of the Babcocks and the Towers. This photo was kindly lent to me by Jack Irwin who is related to some of the founders of Tyro. His great-grandfather, Joseph Lenhart ran this store.
1907 – Inside the store in Tyro, Kansas.
My next find was the Moore Brothers Grocery in Teterville, Kansas. You can read more about this store and my mother’s memories of it in Just Shopping and Teterville Chat. This photo is at the history museum in Eureka, Kansas where they have quite a nice exhibit about Teterville.
Photo from the Eureka Museum of the Moore’s Store in Teterville, Kansas
I have one more story to share, but sadly, no photo of this grocery store. My grandfather, Ren Martin, had a grocery store in Reading, Kansas, after he retired.
Discovering Mom 
I need a time machine – I would love to walk through Joseph Lenhart’s store.
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It does look like a fascinating place. I love the old photos like this.
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I loved seeing the inside of the store! (I have to keep filling in 3 blanks of info when I comment to blogs on WordPress, so I often am in too much of a hurry to do so…but today I just wanted to thank you!)
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Thanks for making the effort to comment and sorry that they make it so hard.
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Grocery stores in small towns often offered more than just groceries. They were often general stores – even to including the post office. When I lived in a small community in far northern California, the little market there had, in addition to the usual groceries, a hardware section, a children’s toy section, a small ‘sewing’ section, and a big stone fireplace with a small table and chairs in front of it where folks gathered to shoot the breeze or play cards or chess or whatever – in front of a warm fire in the winter. I loved shopping there for small needs, but confess driving 25 miles to the larger town of Crescent City to do my full shopping.
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The photos of the store in Tyro are wonderful time capsules of what general stores were really about. More impressive is learning from Wikipedia that Tyro, KS had 600 citizens in 1910, and only 220 a century later. And Teterville is now a ghost town? Kansas must have been a crowded place back in the day.
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When my grandparents were at Teterville 100 years ago, it was an oil boomtown. Now, it’s just a scenic spot in the isolation of the Flint Hills. My parents’ ashes were scattered to the winds on Teter Hill where a stone monolith stands as the only memory of what once was a town.
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The first two photos of the grocery and hardware store bring to mind Dr. Who’s Tardis — seemingly small on the outside, but once inside — wow! Love the post office as well. I had a paternal third great grandfather who was a postmaster at his country store. Although I have no photos, it probably looked much like this one.
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I love the old photos of a much simpler time.
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