Old General Store
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Once a bustling, spicy smelling store, with sausage hanging from the rafters and slabs of bacon displayed in glass cases. This building was erected 1892 by H. S. Williams, merchant and city mayor. It was run 1906-1941 by P. H. Heller, Jr., and wife Annie, who lived next door. In early days, flour was kept in a huge bin; apples, onions, potatoes were stored in the cool, dark cellar; and deliveries were made in a horse-drawn "dray" (wagon).
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1892 by merchant and mayor H. S. Williams, this Columbus store was the kind of place that anchored a small Texas town—sausage hanging from the rafters, apples and potatoes cool in the cellar, and deliveries rattling out by horse-drawn dray. From 1906 to 1941 P. H. Heller Jr. and his wife Annie ran it and lived next door, part of the general store's long reign before automobiles and chain retail. It captures the sensory world of everyday commerce in turn-of-the-century rural America.
Why it matters
The general store was the economic and social hub of countless American towns, and this one preserves that vanished way of provisioning daily life.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · H. S. Williams
- · P. H. Heller Jr.
- · Annie Heller
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hancock-Heller Home
Columbus, TX
County tax collector John S. Hancock built the original cypress-and-cedar house here in 1865, its "dog-trot" hall dividing the front rooms. A later owner moved a second house to the rear in 1884 and dressed the porch and gable in elaborate Victorian trim. In 1906 the rancher and merchant P. F. Heller's family bought the home, and their descendants have occupied it ever since.
Rosenfield Building
Columbus, TX
Columbus was one of the oldest Anglo settlements in Texas, and this corner held one of its earliest downtown commercial structures, raised in 1837 and later home to a doctor's family and practice. In 1872 merchant John Rosenfield acquired the property, and around 1896 he built the handsome brick storefront that stands today. With its buff-brick walls, terra cotta trim, and paired-bay upper facade, it is a textbook example of a turn-of-the-century small-town Main Street.
Brunson Building
Columbus, TX
Charles Brunson left Westphalia, Germany, in 1845 as part of the great mid-century German migration to Texas, and by about 1867 had settled in Columbus, where his saloon prospered. In 1891 he erected this Victorian commercial building, adding an adjoining store in 1896; it poured drinks until around 1919 and then took on other uses. Aside from a lowered canopy and altered windows, it still wears its original Victorian dress.
Brick Store House
Columbus, TX
This sturdy brick building in Columbus was owned and occupied from 1840 to 1867 by Thomas W. Harris, a Virginia-born physician, in the early years of the Republic and young state of Texas. It passed through a succession of owners — the Pinchbacks, Kasper Vogel, and Bertha Wagner, whose heirs still held it — and since 1912 has sheltered the Fehrenkamp Grocery, a rare case of a frontier-era commercial building serving its town for well over a century.