I recently wrote about cotton farmer John B. Broadwell (1855-1953) and the dry goods store he built in the Crabapple five-way junction where he sold fertilizer and other farm products. The building, constructed at the turn of the last century, still contributes to the charm and uniqueness of the Crabapple community. Today I will put some bones on the building’s story.
B.Y. Coleman is one of the few local residents who knew John Broadwell who was the half-brother of B.Y.’s grandfather Sim Broadwell. B.Y. recalls that John B. (often called J.B.) and his half-brother Newport ran the store together, although J.B. did not come into the store very often because he was getting on in years. At the corner of the building and Mid-Broadwell Road was a wagon wheel with neighborhood mailboxes on it.
“Every day I saw J.B. walk from his house where the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church is today to get his mail,” B.Y. says.
Newport’s wife Nancy (known as Nanny) was a schoolteacher who organized plays on the second floor of the building with local residents as actors. There was a stage with dressing rooms at each end of the stage. The plays ran from the early 1900s until the 1920s. Square dances were also held upstairs and were held in T. Allen’s cabinet shop across the street where a bicycle shop stood until recently.
“Every day farmers played checkers in the back of the store from late afternoon until the store closed,” B.Y. says. “There was a stove to keep warm and a sandbox where players could spit tobacco juice. I remember the games from about age 6 until I was drafted at age 18.”
T.R. Dinsmore, who lived where the Milton Library is today, bought the building from J.B. Dinsmore and operated a grocery store and sold hardware and farm implements, horse collars, overalls, boots and shoes. He sold the building to Matt Perkins, editor of…
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