A piece of the past: Reynolds man plans to re-open family mercantile store

Before he dreamed of opening a mercantile store, Jamie Whitley had to learn how to pronounce it.

It’s “mercan-teel,” not “mercan-tile,” his grandmother told him.

Jamie is a 34-year-old Taylor County native. He owns a graphic design and print company, so his fingerprints are all over his hometown.

He also is a local history buff, and he began researching the Reynolds Mercantile Company after arriving at the intersection of family history and town history.

The store was owned by J.N. Bryan, a local businessman who was in a line of great uncles on Jamie’s family tree. It opened in 1913, and Bryan kept it going until the mid-1930s, when the Great Depression slammed the doors on the business, as it did so many others.

If you remember the Reynolds Mercantile, you are older than a clump of Taylor County dirt. A century ago, it was the place for one-stop shopping, the Wal-Mart or Dollar General of its day. It carried everything from farm supplies to fencing, bricks, shingles, wagons, buggies and even thoroughbred mules.

In three weeks, on the eve of the town’s annual Georgia Strawberry Festival (April 23), Reynolds Mercantile will be re-born – minus the mules. As the grand re-opening approaches, Jamie can hardly contain his excitement. He and his business partner, Walter Wainwright, have been working for months getting ready for the big event in a building located around the corner from the original mercantile.

Jamie placed banners in the storefront windows to explain the history of the business. It also kept the locals from stopping on the sidewalk and pressing their faces against the glass, trying to get a peek inside.

He encouraged them to be curious, though. And he still gets asked about the progress at least a dozen times a day.

“People want to come and see what we are doing. They want to know when we’re opening,’’ he said. “They also want me to define mercantile and how to say it. When I would read about it in the old papers, my grandmother would correct me. She told me I needed to pronounce it properly. She was adamant about it.’’

Jamie will have a lump in his throat when the doors open. He regrets that his grandmother did not live to see it. Louise Keen died two years ago last month. She was 93.

She was a huge influence on his life, and was a long-time employee of the Hinton Insurance Agency in Reynolds. He takes comfort in knowing she is looking down from those holes in the floor of heaven and nodding her approval.

After remodeling the 1,600 square foot building, which has served as everything from a pharmacy to a hair-weave shop to a pawn shop down through the years, Jamie and Wainwright have been tweaking their inventory and working on their presentation.

“We wanted to make it look as much like an old general store as we could,’’ Jamie said. “We are going back to our hometown roots and shopping local.’’

The mercantile will carry dry goods and clothing lines — all made in the U.S. — and will focus on fresh, locally grown vegetables and locally raised meat. For the true sentimental patrons, there will be a variety of old-fashioned candy and bottles of cold Coca-Cola from a vintage ice chest.

The centerpiece of the store, though, is not for sale. It is the first thing that greets you when you walk in – the brass cash register from the original mercantile, which later became an appliance store.

The owner’s son sent a photo to Mac Goddard, whose family roots spread across four generations in Reynolds. Knowing Jamie’s keen interest in history and his relation to the Bryan family, Goddard gave the photo to Jamie.

“That was a year and a half ago, before we even decided to open the store,’’ Jamie said. “When I saw it, I said, ‘That’s Reynolds history. I have to figure out how to get it.’ ’’

He located another old cash register from New York, drove to Savannah to meet the seller, then traveled another eight hours across Florida to Pensacola to swap it out. On the bottom was the original label from Reynolds Mercantile Company, dated Dec. 8, 1913, the day the store opened.

“He didn’t have any sentimental attachment to it, except that his last name was Reynolds,’’ Jamie said.

The cash register is fully functional … minus a credit card chip reader, of course. It’s just for show, anyway. There’s a modern register in the back for all the transactions.

Just how much business flows through the cash drawers is a leap of faith. Jamie understands how consumer habits have changed with on-line shopping and big-box retail stores.

“I guess I do have some concern,’’ he said. “But I have faith it is going to do well. I have gotten a lot of good feedback from everybody. I think people are seeing the idea of shopping local, communities being self sufficient and trying to get back to how things used to be.’’

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sunday in The Telegraph.