The General Store in Lyn
The General Store in Lyn was located at 25 Main Street West and was first owned by A. T. Trickey. It was a drug store and also a general merchandise store. A.T. Trickey ran it until approximately 1890 when it was purchased by Mr. Gardiner. Mr. Gardiner did not have a druggist pharmacy license so he hired a fellow from Tamworth, Ontario by the name of C. M. Taylor. He went to work for Mr. Gardiner, later married Mr. Gardiner’s daughter and eventually took over the store. Mr. Taylor and his wife eventually took over the Gardiner house on Perth Street, which is north of the United Church. They lived there for many years and had one daughter who lived there until approximately the 1950’s. Next Eldon Coon took over that house and built a new house for Miss Taylor to live in. Originally the house was built by the Coleman Family and it was said that every brick in it had been wrapped in tissue paper and shipped from England and all the steel rims around the outside had been made in France by the same people who made the Eiffel Tower.
In 1919 the store was sold to John McCrady who worked part time for Mr. Taylor. When he took over the store it became more of a grocery store than anything. He sold ice from the ice house behind the store. The hotel that was next to it burned in 1928 and what was left of the walls remained there until the late 1940’s. He ran the store until the late 1940’s when he sold it to his son Dave McCrady.
Dave McCrady ran the store for a couple of years and then sold it to Frank McCrady, his brother. In 1947 Frank sold it to Earl “Dusty” and Cleta Miller. They took over the store, enlarged it, fixed the apartment upstairs and lived above the store. They built a piece beside the store from which they sold appliances. They ran it until 1985 when they sold it to the Pourier Brothers. Under their ownership the business didn’t survive and they left. The store was sold to a fellow from Hopetown. He started to renovate the inside but it caught fire and burned through the roof. The building was then torn down and an empty lot was left. The lot remained empty until Ursula Veltcamp bought it and built the little restaurant that is now there. The Stack hotel was right beside it on the western side.