Welcome to the first Grocery Archaeology Roundup post! In and around Worcester, I have a lot of long-ago grocers -- many independent stores once built into houses or apartment buildings, some from so far back that they didn't even use a brand name beyond the owner's name. Rather than doing a post each, at the end of the group of towns or neighborhoods, I'll be doing one post that takes a quick look at each spot. Using the Groceteria method of consulting city directories, I have listings for what each location was roughly every 5-10 years from 1916 up through today. Today we're looking at Leicester (pronounced "lester") to the west of Worcester (pronounced "wuhster"), and an unincorporated community within Leicester called Cherry Valley.
1044 Main St, Leicester, MA: Leroux's Market (1975-1989)
800 Main St, Leicester, MA: Mildred Entwistle (1961)
515 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: Willie Rusby (1955-1961)
449 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: McDermott Bros (1937-1961)
392 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: Michael Manning (1937-1961)
315 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: Walter Orent (1937)
253 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: John Conway (1937)
7 Church St, Cherry Valley, MA: Grace Chesney (1937) > Leonard Chesney (1955-1964)
207 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: Archie McLean (1937) > Shirley Smith (1955) > Shirley McLean (1961) > McLean's Grocery (1964)
147 Main St, Cherry Valley, MA: Valley Market (1937) > Valley Super Market (1961-1989)
A note on sources: To get these listings, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1920s. In the Worcester suburbs, the directories aren't the most frequent, so I have looked at 1926, 1937, 1955, 1961, 1964, 1975, 1982, and 1989. Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph.
Reading the captions: A caption such as the following...
| John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982)
...means that John Smith appears in the directories in 1926 and 1937, and Joe Jones appears in all directories I consulted between 1955 and 1982. That doesn't mean that John Smith opened up shop in 1926 and closed in 1937, he might have started in 1920 and closed in 1941 but since I don't have those records, I don't know for sure. Any questions (or corrections), feel free to drop a note in the comments and I'll look into it!
Leicester
1072 Main St, Leicester, MA: Leicester Public Market (1961-1964)
Notice Crossroads Marketplace visible in the background.
1052 Main St, Leicester, MA: Frank McGauley (1937)
Not sure of the exact location, but it's probably somewhere like where the parking lot is today.
I suspect the store started out in the small gray building that's now a florist and eventually moved into its present location, and these days it's more of a liquor store.
1065 Main St, Leicester, MA: Arthur Rhodes (1937)
Entwistle's is still going strong as a garage (and clearly, previously a gas station), but back in 1961 the building that's not the garage was a tiny grocery store owned by Mildred Entwistle.
Cherry Valley
Cherry Valley is a small unincorporated community within Leicester roughly between the center of town and the Worcester border.
Notice that, although this is definitely a residential building, there's clear evidence of this being a business -- in fact, it still is, notice the "closed" sign on the front door. There are a few sections where Main Street was rebuilt to go around the original residential strip, and this is on one of them. This building faces away from the new Main Street, which was constructed around the 1950s.
One of the things I look for in old buildings that are currently residential but were previously a storefront is a suspicious number of doors on the front wall. Is there any good reason this house would otherwise have two front doors? Frequently the old storefront was blended in with the rest of the house, but they never bothered to remove a door.
A challenge on the larger buildings is figuring out just exactly what particular door or area was originally the grocery store. Here, any number of doors and areas in the front or back could be a former tiny grocery store, or maybe this building was constructed after the grocery store closed (though my intuition says this building dates back to before 1937).
Just off Main Street in Cherry Valley. I'm truly at a loss to figure out what part of this house was once a grocery store -- or if perhaps there was another structure that was demolished. Still another option is that the smaller brown house just beyond the beige one was actually built as the store.
This one is interesting for a few reasons. For one, again we can see the space once used as a grocery store is still a business. Second, tracking the names opens up to any number of stories. On the one hand, it's possible Shirley Smith got married between 1955 and 1961 and became Shirley McLean. But on the other, I'm not positive why you'd then see a McLean in this spot prior to that.
Obviously, the building is gone (demolished not that long ago, around 2016), but the foundation remains! And, of course, the massive parking lot. Up until around 2010, the store was Duffy's Discount, what looks like a discount grocery and liquor store.
And that's all for Leicester and Cherry Valley! It's amazing how we're really out in the country here (you can see in some of these pictures, or if you go look at a map) but here in Cherry Valley, we're just four miles from the downtown of the second largest city in New England. In fact, Main Street through Leicester and Cherry Valley -- which continues way out west to the Springfield area as state route 9 -- is the same Main Street as the one through downtown Worcester. Now tomorrow, we're headed to the south for a look at southwestern Worcester County!
With the building that is at 315 Main Street - it looks like that one door says 315 B, so it is probably being used as multiple apartments (which may also explain two "front" doors).
ReplyDeleteOne possibility for the McLean store is that Shirley was actually a daughter of the original McLean. In 1955, she was married (thus the last name Smith), but between then and 1961 something happened to Mr. Smith (divorce, death?) and she went back to using her maiden name.
Being as how the earlier lists only give the person's name, while that last one has the McLean's Grocery listing, it's possible it was always run under that name, but that we can't know, unless someone who lives in that area happens to see it :)
All of those are good points. Thanks!
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