The Boyer Store

May 28

I have always been fascinated by the Boyer Store in Mt. Zion, PA and general stores, well, generally. I like the idea of a local place that has everything one might need to buy, and everyone you might need to see—an informal community meeting space but with shopping. Although I wasn’t born when it was the “Boyer Store”, we would drive past it when we were in town. As I worked on my family tree, I learned that the store actually has a long history in our family even before Harry and Pauline (Houtz) Boyer bought it, belonging to ancestors on both Harry’s maternal side (1928 to 1947) and paternal side (about 1869 and 1877). Over the years and multiple owners, the space had been a home, hotel, a tavern, store, and even a post office for Mt. Zion (Bethel Township, Lebanon County, PA), having been owned by Schock & Fox, Warren Barto, Harry Phillipy, Augustus Zellers, William Schaeffer, Wilson Lutz, Harry G. Boyer, and John Trautman (Darkes, 1994). When the Boyers ran the store, it was home and a general store, complete with gas pump.

The building that was “our store” was originally built in 1850 according to court documents (needs citation). In small towns (like Mt. Zion), the post office was often run out of a store or other business, and for many years our store was also the post office for Mt. Zion. In 1850 when our store was built, Mt. Zion had had a post office for 12 years already (starting in 1838), but I don’t know where it was located. For the first 23 years of postal service, Daniel Light (listed as a merchant in the 1850 census) and Samuel Goshert took turns serving as postmaster. From then until 1869, Peter Gerhart, George R Krum, and Mark Hoffa all served as postmasters. Our store acted as post office from at least 1869 to 1877, when Harry’s great great uncle (father’s father’s mother’s brother) Peter A. Glick (1847-1882) and his wife Amelia owned the store and hotel, and Peter served as postmaster. (Ancestry.com Appointments of U.S. Postmasters)

1875 Map of Mt. Zion, from the Lebanon County Atlas - showing our store: “Mt. Zion HO. & P.O.”

Peter A. Glick went into the Dry Goods business in 1868 with Isaac Allwein, “under the firm name of Allwein & Glick at 745 Cumberland Street”. According to Allwein family genealogists, “The business not being very successful [Isaac] sold out his interest after one year’s trial in April 1869 to his partner Mr. Glick.” In 1869 Peter became postmaster and presumably started the hotel and store at the same time. At that time, the census records the population of the whole township of Bethel (in which Mt. Zion was located) was under 1,800 people. The “Mount Zion House” is shown on the 1875 map of Mt. Zion, found in the 1875 County Atlas of Lebanon—shown as “Mt. Zion HO & P.O.”, with his name—"P.A. Glick”. The Atlas Directory also describes him as a “Dealer in Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, Queensware, Drugs, Boots, Shoes, &c. Propr of the Mt. Zion House, and Post-master. P O, Mt Zion, Lebanon co”. By 1880, Peter A. Glick had left the Mt. Zion House, and was working as a grocer in Reading, in the next county over. A new postmaster took over in Mt. Zion in 1877 – Dr. Ezra Grumbine, but I don’t know if he (or the next postmaster, John A Schock) worked out of our store location. I imagine that Dr. Grumbine was postmaster from his medical practice location.

I have information to share!

Do you know more about the Mt. Zion store, or have memories, thoughts or references to share? If so, please click above!

**Barto’s Store & Hotel**

The last postmaster before the Mt. Zion post office was discontinued in 1915 was Warren R. Barto, and it appears that he did run a store, hotel, and the post office out of the same location. The photo is a post card of the Barto’s Store and Hotel in Mt. Zion, Pa from the early 1900s. The building on the right looks to have been part of the hotel at this time, though by the 1950s it was unused and being referred to as the “chicken house”.

Sometime before 1930, Wilson and Sallie (Schaeffer) Lutz bought the store, valued at $5000, and moved to Mt. Zion from Jackson Township, Lebanon County, where Wilson had worked as a farmer for over 20 years. Sallie was Harry’s great aunt (his father’s mother’s sister). It is likely the couple bought the store and moved to Mt. Zion at least in part to take care of Sallie’s mother, Emma M (Reedy) Schaeffer who would have been 81 when her husband died in 1928. In 1928, Wilson would have been 56, and with no children to help him on his farm, he was probably also ready for a less physically taxing job. In various censuses, Wilson was listed as a retail merchant of general merchandise (1930) and as proprietor of a general store in Mt. Zion, having worked 58 hours in the last week (1940).

**Store and Related Buildings**

On June 2, 1947, as a young couple with a 7-month old baby, Harry and Pauline Boyer (shown here with the store in the background) bought the store from Wilson and Sallie. The middle door you see on the photo goes into the kitchen. The door on the right goes to the upstairs apartment (kitchen, living room, bedroom—and shared upstairs bath!). The gas pumps would have been on the left side of the photo, where the car is parked (though they are gone by the time this photo was taken). There was also a tall “Atlantic” gas sign—the company which ultimately became ARCO.

There were two other large structures on the 4-acre property – a three-story building that they called the “chicken house”, and a two-story warehouse. The chicken house was torn down while the Boyers owned it because it was no longer safe. The Boyer kids didn’t know why it was called the chicken house. According to Russel Darkes’s Mt. Zion history, the building’s name came from the fact that at one time it had been used to raise chickens by Coble Grimes, who went on to establish Grimes Poultry in Fredericksburg. It must have been something else before that though—possibly an extension of the hotel or the bar that no one talked about? It had a grand staircase inside, which aren’t usually built for chickens.

Bruce Boyer remembers the warehouse right next to the store. “The first floor of [the warehouse] was used (when I was young) to store returned soda bottles, cow licks, and various odds and ends. The second story of that warehouse was reserved for us kids. It had a trap door that closed over the stairs so that once there we could keep out the adults. It had a closet with a piece of broken tombstone! Plus it had two other rooms that we, the kids, put to various other uses. One major use was a room-sized maze of tunnels made out of cardboard that we could crawl through and which had a secret door! The tunnels had electricity from an extension cord attached to a ceiling light fixture, though we could turn off the tunnel’s electricity from the secret room.”

““The Boyer store is typical of the good old days, carries a line of about everything, clean, and cheerful, is a social center and institution of Mt. Zion.””

— Paul Shoemaker, 1948

**Pauline Boyer**

A 1948 article in the Altoona Tribune, called “This Morning’s Comment” gushes about the wonders of Mt Zion and how amazing it is. It also highlights Pauline Boyer and the store towards the end. “At the old Mt. Zion inn, the visitors were shown about by beautiful-to-look-at Mrs. Pauline Boyer, who might have stepped out of a Paul Helleu etching, and as gracious as she is good looking, of a high-bred type. The Boyer store is typical of the good old days, carries a line of about everything, clean, and cheerful, is a social center and institution of Mt. Zion.” (Shoemaker, 1948)

For reference, here is a side by side of a photo of Pauline Boyer and a Paul Helleu etching. I didn’t know this French artist and had to look him up. He seemed to draw mostly young women. I can certainly see the resemblance.

**Inside the Store**

Bruce Boyer describes what is seen in this photo. “The checkout counter is on the right on top of an ice cream freezer. Next on the right after a rack of candies from Reading, PA, is an old-fashioned upright soda cooler [a small 6 oz. Coke was six cents!]. After the soda cooler on the right was the bread and bakery shelves; bread was 25 or 26 cents a loaf depending on the type. And all the way in the back of the store (barely visible) is the meat, cheese, eggs, and vegetable cooler. (We sliced local cheeses, lunch meats and bolognas, as per customer request.) It looks like there are lots of six-packs of sodas on the floor along the left side of the aisle (all soda bottles were returnable). Neither Lynn nor I remember the store being quite so crowded!”

“To the right of the checkout counter (not visible) is another aisle, with an upright dairy cooler, at the front, two meat and vegetable freezers (including TV dinners in later years), and importantly, many different kinds of bulk pretzels (in metal cans with glass lids) which we also had to weigh out. And soaps and detergents, coffee and teas, and of course, cereals and oatmeal. And all the way in the back of the store, behind the meat counter was a small room that had wooden kegs of nails that we weighed out piecemeal by the pound on a balance scale with metal weights placed on the one side. (Our sole telephone, business and personal, was in the back of the store on a cereal shelf right above the corn flakes. Imagine trying to talk to your girl friend while sitting on the floor or the bottom shelf with customers wondering about!)”

Floor Plan of Boyer Store/Home First Floor

In 1956, Harry’s mother, Lizzie (Kline) Boyer—“Grandma Boyer” to the his kids, lived in a hospital bed in the living room for a number of months (probably from December to April) after a stroke. She had been diagnosed with Diabetes and Heart Disease 5 years earlier, and went into circulatory failure 3 days before she passed away. She died in the living room in at age 65, less than a month before her 66th birthday. Elaine remembers “Grandma Boyer” being carried out of the living room upon her death, through the front door of the living room. Bruce, who was away at school when his grandmother died, cannot remember that door ever having been opened otherwise. “Friends usually entered through the store (if it was open) or from an outside door directly into the kitchen.”

Sallie’s husband Wilson Lutz had passed away in 1954 at age 81, and in 1956, she was listed as living in Myerstown, at 207 W Main Ave. At some point thereafter, she moved in with Harry and Pauline at the store. Bruce’s recollection is that “she asked if she could live in a three room upstairs apartment (with kitchen and separate stairs to the outside). So she lived with us for many years before her death. The sole bathroom in the upstairs was shared with us. I also remember my parents (Harry and Pauline) assisting her with her health issues, like helping her walk at night when her legs would cramp up. She had a 1954 Ford which she kept in one of the garages. She was quite a conversationalist. I remember her talking at length about the William Schaeffer (her father) who was wounded in the Civil War and was brought to Gettysburg College which was pressed into service as a hospital of sorts.” Eventually Sallie moved to the United Church of Christ nursing home in Annville, where she later passed away at age 95.

**Selling the Store**

Harry and Pauline sold the store on June 1, 1973 according to the county courthouse. Bruce and Lynn “think that Mama and Papa had purchased their new house in Sunset (near Lebanon) before that date and that they actually could have moved out of the store before that date with possibly some sort of short-term rental agreement with the new owners. But we don’t know. But at least the date is pretty close.” A couple of weeks before the sale date, they held an auction to sell household goods and antiques. Lynn and Bruce “both remember an auction at the store to sell off a lot of old stuff (the store inventory transferred to the new owner who kept the store open for a number of years).”
The Lebanon Daily News advertised the auction on May 11 and 15, listing quite a long catalog of things being sold. Ray Deck (Pauline’s uncle) and Curtis Swope were listed as Clerks, with refreshments provided by the “Willing Workers of Zoars Church”. Items for sale included: “Piano & Stool, Organ Stool, 2 pc, Living Room suite, Goose neck Rocker, 4 White metal Tables, TV set, Antique Rockers, Oak Round Table, 2 rugs & mats, Studio Couch, Sewing Machine, Elect. stove, metal cabinet, end tables, Elect. heater, Elct. Fan, mattress, Bed spring, metal bed, very fine shelf clock, Rocking chairs, stuffed chairs, magazine rack, typewriter, laundry cart, large Coffee grinder, commode, wooden counter drawers, wooden shell boxes, nail kegs, oil lights, dye cabinet, 4 spool cabinets, kitchen chairs, cane seat chairs.

Throw rugs, 16 gauge Double Barrel Hammer gun, 22 rifle, 32 pistol, shells & bullets, 2 Elect. sweepers, Scotch picnic coolers, vanity, metal wardrobe, wall cabinet, Shoe Chest, Elect. iron, Elect clock, Jars, Jugs, Candy Jars, Toaster, iron troughs, buckets, rocks, tools, carpet runners, Xmas trimmings, platform scale, step ladder, roof-ladders, elect. mixer, elect. deep fryer, pole light, floor & table lights, elect. floor polisher, cloth hampers, new dead latch, peach baskets, Baby crib, play pen, Child’s wardrobe, Child’s table and chairs, large doll, doll crib, Toys, Suitcases, Crocks, Water set, hand sprayer, Scale & Weights, Smoking stand, Bread Box, cake tins, waste baskets, picture hooks, Child’s school desk, ironing boards, ice crusher, dishes, pots, pans Copper tea kettle, 4 mixing bowls, Iron stone tea pot and sugar bowl, flatiron, Date jars, Cowden crock and jug, power lawn mower, Wheelbarrow, hay ladder, lawn spreader, and lots of items not mentioned.”

I don’t know if the new buyers ever continued to operate the Mt. Zion store, but they did purchase the store with its contents. Although the main store/house is still there (2022), it is not currently a store. Sadly, small mom and pop general stores have largely disappeared across the U.S. If we can’t have the stores, at least we can keep and document their memories. I am always looking for more information, so please share if you have any ideas, facts, or stories about the store or Mt. Zion in general!

Sources

Darkes, Russel J. History of Mt. Zion Lebanon Co. - Bethel Twp. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. self-published, 1994.

Shoemaker, Henry W. “This Morning’s Comment.” Altoona Tribune. April 26, 1948.

Bruce Boyer (private email) email to Quincy Dermody (quincyboyer@hotmail.com). “‘History of Mt. Zion’ Continued,” May 23, 2020.

Bruce Boyer (private email) email to Quincy Dermody (quincyboyer@hotmail.com). “IMG_0828.Jpeg,” May 4, 2020.

Alwin, Duane F. “Familie Allwein: Hans Jacob and Catharina Allwein and Their Descendents Volume II: Journeys in Time and Place Part 1-Southeastern Pennsylvania” 2013

1875 County Atlas of Lebanon, found on www.historicmapworks.com

Postcard. “Barto’s Store & Hotel, Mt. Zion, Pa.” Postcard sold online, screenshot. Accessed April 19, 2020. ebay.

Auction: Harry Boyer Public Sale.” Lebanon Daily News. May 15, 1973. newspapers.com. Accessed April 19, 2020.

Ancestry.com. “U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971,” Database with images, image 466. 2010. Accessed 10/7/22. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1932/images/30439_065495-00468?pId=542290.

“1930 U.S. Federal Census Bethel, Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Page: 2B; Enumeration District: 0005; FHL Microfilm: 2341795.” Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1930. Accessed 10/7/2022. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4639392_00649?pId=52496488. Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626.

“1940 U.S. Federal Census Bethel, Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Roll: M-T0627-03540; Page: 14A; Enumeration District: 38-4 Online Publication -.” Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Database with images. Accessed October 7, 2022. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/M-T0627-03540-00143?pId=25659445. Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627

Quincy Dermody

The Boyer Store

Harry Boyer, Seaman

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