Sherley, A. & Bro. Hardware Store
Anna, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Lewis and Paulina Sherley moved to north Texas from Kentucky about 1853. When the town of Anna was established in 1872, their grandsons, brothers Andrew and Fred Sherley, opened a hardware store. In 1894 they built this structure to house the business. It remained in the family after the store closed in 1979. Over time they were undertakers as well as purveyors of furniture, farming implements and machinery, wagons, cotton, grain and groceries. Wagon-weighing scales in front of the building were removed when the road was widened. The structure is a fine example of an early Texas commercial building, retaining the original canopy and painted signs. Minimal Victorian-era detailing includes corbelled brickwork in the parapet and paneled kickplates on storefront display windows.Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1999
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the town of Anna sprang up along the railroad in 1872, brothers Andrew and Fred Sherley—grandsons of Kentucky migrants—opened a hardware store, and in 1894 raised this brick building to house it. Over the decades the Sherleys sold furniture, farm implements, wagons, cotton and groceries and even served as undertakers, the wagon scales out front weighing the harvests of a farming county until the store closed in 1979.
Why it matters
The building is a well-preserved example of the general-purpose commercial houses that anchored the main streets of railroad-era Texas farm towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1870s, north Texas was being remade by the railroad. Towns didn't grow so much as appear—surveyors laid out a grid, a depot went up, and a main street of brick storefronts followed within a season or two. Anna, in Collin County, was one of these creations of 1872, a farm town stitched to the wider world by the tracks that ran through it.
This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era, when cotton was king across the blackland prairie and a family's fortunes rose and fell with the harvest. A county like Collin lived by its soil, and the town that served it needed a place where a farmer could buy a plow, weigh his cotton, order a wagon, and settle his affairs.
Into that world came families who had come a long way to reach it. The Sherleys had migrated to north Texas from Kentucky around 1853, part of the steady stream of Upper South settlers who carried their trades and their names into the new country. A generation later, their grandsons would put down roots on Anna's main street that lasted more than a century.
People & events
The story here is really the story of one family across three generations. Lewis and Paulina Sherley made the move from Kentucky to north Texas in the early 1850s. Their grandsons, the brothers Andrew and Fred Sherley, came of age just as Anna was being founded, and in 1872 they opened a hardware store in the young town.
For two decades the business grew, and in 1894 the brothers built the brick structure that still stands to house it. What a "hardware store" meant on a Texas main street was far broader than the name suggests. The Sherleys sold furniture, farming implements and machinery, wagons, cotton, grain, and groceries—and they served the community as undertakers as well. In a farm town, a single trusted family firm often carried a community from cradle to grave.
Out front stood wagon-weighing scales, where the harvests of the surrounding county were measured and sold—a small, practical fixture that made the store a hub of the local economy. The scales were eventually removed when the road was widened, one of those quiet losses that mark how a place changes. The store finally closed in 1979, more than a hundred years after the brothers first opened their doors, and the building remained in the family even then.
Its place in the American story
The general-purpose commercial house—part hardware store, part furniture dealer, part funeral parlor—was one of the most important institutions in small-town America. In an age before chain stores and highways, a family firm like the Sherleys' was where a rural community met the manufactured world: the plows and wagons, the stoves and coffins, the goods that turned raw farmland into settled life.
Anna's growth along the railroad in 1872 repeats a pattern that played out thousands of times across the post–Civil War map. The rails decided which crossroads became towns, and the brick storefronts that lined their main streets were the physical proof that a place intended to last. A building raised in 1894 and used by one family until 1979 is a rare survivor of that world.
Its recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1999 reflects a broader American impulse to protect not just grand monuments but the everyday architecture of ordinary commerce—the buildings where the real economic life of the country happened.
If you visit
Come to look closely at the building itself, because it wears its age honestly. This is a fine example of an early Texas commercial building, and much of its original character survives: the canopy over the sidewalk, the painted signs still legible on the walls, and the modest Victorian flourishes that a prosperous small-town merchant could afford.
Let your eye travel up to the parapet, where corbelled brickwork—courses of brick stepped out to catch the light—gives the plain façade a touch of dignity. Down at street level, notice the paneled kickplates beneath the storefront display windows, the kind of small, careful detailing that separated a proper commercial block from a mere shed.
Stand on the sidewalk out front and imagine the wagon scales that once sat here, and the farmers who lined up to weigh their cotton and grain. A stop in Anna pairs naturally with a slow drive through the small farm towns of Collin County, where a single well-preserved storefront can tell you more about how people actually lived than any museum case.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Andrew Sherley
- · Fred Sherley
Themes & tags
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