This was our original retail store, "H.C. Newsom Store," separated by only a firewall adjacent to my other buildings and the existing retail store Newsom's Old Mill Store. This was where "the store" all began. H.C. Newsom, my grandfather, occupied the building in 1917. According to advertisements in the local newspaper, he opened the grocery store on January 1. Prior to that he had operated an enterprise call the Mill Store Stand, down by the "old mill." The location that my grandfather occupied in 1917 had exclusively been a grocery, general store business since its construction in 1865. It was the only store of its nature, selling general store merchandise, pickles in barrels, flour, sugar, etc. -- all out of barrels. Dishes were, even at that time, used as incentive for retail sales, customers obtained them for purchase of "X" amount of merchandise. Imagine that? a marketing device like that in 1917? Everyone in that day cured their own aged meat, so fewer hams were sold out of the H.C. Newsom Retail Store than today. There was a large market in bulk garden seeds. Bundled vegetable plants were grown by my grandfather in his backyard greenhouse for use in sales at his store. In fact, he was known as “the garden seed and plant man.”