Hickman Street Grocery

This arti­cle was prompt­ed by a ques­tion from my friend Chuck Witt about the Hickman Street Grocery. His nephew, Kevin Cantrell, who now owns the store, want­ed to know how long it had been a gro­cery. While Kevin thought it might date to the 1950s, Chuck knew it was there in 1946 when he was liv­ing on Georgia Street, and he asked me what sources might reveal the actu­al date.

I met Kevin Cantrell last week at the gro­cery. A Pike County native, he pur­chased the Fox Grocery at Trapp in 2002, then sold it in 2023 to acquire the Hickman Street Grocery at 208 East Hickman Street. Mr. Cantrell does a brisk lunchtime busi­ness and is rapid­ly build­ing up the break­fast trade. I asked whether they were known for their ham­burg­ers, and his friend Belvin Brandenburg replied, “They’re famous for their chili dogs.”

To deter­mine when the gro­cery start­ed, I con­sult­ed old city direc­to­ries, maps, and news­pa­pers. This search turned up an entry in Caron’s Winchester Directory for 1911—“Trimble, Thos. F., gro­cer, 208 E. Hickman”—indicating a sur­pris­ing­ly ear­ly date for the grocery’s begin­ning. Thus, the hum­ble lit­tle gro­cery, sit­u­at­ed between Georgia and Alabama Streets on an unnamed alley, has been a going con­cern for over a century.

The gro­cery is locat­ed in the South Park Addition, which was plat­ted in 1904 and rough­ly bound­ed by French Avenue and Highland, Hickman, and Kentucky Streets. Sanborn insur­ance maps (1912 and 1926) show the long, nar­row build­ing near­ly fills the 24′ x 56′ lot.  The gro­cery stands in an area that then con­sist­ed of all sin­gle-fam­i­ly dwellings.  Grocery stores in new res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods had the advan­tage of con­sid­er­ably low­er costs com­pared to down­town businesses. 

Deed and news­pa­per search­es made it pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy the series of own­ers from 1911 to the present.

Thomas Trimble called his busi­ness the South Side Grocery.  A few years after open­ing the store, he entered the whole­sale gro­cery busi­ness with Phil Hodgkin, with loca­tions in Winchester and Mt. Sterling.  In 1919, Trimble sold the Hickman Street prop­er­ty to Thomas N. Todd, who had oper­at­ed a series of gro­ceries and meat mar­kets on Broadway and North and South Main.  For one year (1924) A. and E. Somers were list­ed as oper­a­tors of the gro­cery at 208 East Hickman.

In 1925, Garrett Green resigned his posi­tion as man­ag­er of the Central Army Store on Main Street and pur­chased the gro­cery busi­ness from Thomas Todd.  (The Todd fam­i­ly con­tin­ued to hold onto own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty at 208 East Hickman until 1976.)  The G. J. Grocery oper­at­ed there con­tin­u­ous­ly for the next 38 years.  Belvin Brandenburg told me that when the Greens ran the store, the build­ing was paint­ed green.  Chuck Witt added that Mr. Green lived on Georgia Street, not far from the grocery.

Starting in about 1964, A. B. and Pauline Vice ran the store as Vice’s Grocery.  In 1976, Curtis and Peggy Burgess pur­chased the Hickman Street prop­er­ty from the Todd heirs.  The fol­low­ing year, the Burgesses sold the prop­er­ty to Bennie and Wanda Everman.  They rechris­tened the busi­ness “Hickman Street Grocery,” the name it still goes by today.  The pop­u­lar and out­go­ing cou­ple ran the gro­cery for 38 years until Bennie died in 2016.  Wanda kept the store open for four more years, then sold it to Ivon and Virginia Miller.  They in turn deed­ed the busi­ness to Fox Trapp Property, an LLC reg­is­tered by Kevin Cantrell.

In clos­ing, I should add that the chili dogs are amaz­ing (and Bob Tabor’s favorite).