Column: This Old Store
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This Old Store: Worley’s Grocery A Testament to a Family’s Persistence
When Sarah DeBaker Worley’s husband, George Worley Sr., abandoned her and their four children during the early years of the 20th century, it was hard for a divorced, Catholic woman to find work. She received relief from Sturgeon Bay and Door County for a while before finding a job as a school custodian to support […]
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This Old Store: Trodahl’s at Madison and Maple
‘The busiest grocery store in town’ Anyone born in Sturgeon Bay since 1967 can tell you there’s been a gas station on the northwest corner of Madison and Maple streets for as long as they’ve lived. And they’re right. But for 97 years before that, a grocery story occupied that corner. The first one was […]
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Mann’s: ‘The Store Where You Can Always Get It’
There are likely a number of isolated areas in the country that have access to just one grocery store, but it’s not likely that anywhere else can match Washington Island’s record of having the same store for 117 years, run by five generations of the same family. In 1902, 21-year-old George O. Mann went to […]
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THIS OLD STORE: Bley’s Grocery in Jacksonport
Ralph Herbst and his dad, Elmer, built the first grocery store in Jacksonport in 1949. Ralph left a few years later to join the Navy and ended up making a career of it. Wayne Bley was six when his parents, Wallace and Laverne, bought the store in 1956 and changed the name to Bley’s Grocery, […]
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This Old Store: The Lundberg Store
In 1902, Alex and Alice Lundberg closed their Juddville store and built a general store in Fish Creek. They also built a large home at the corner of Cottage Row and Maple Street that’s now part of the White Gull Inn property. The turn of that century – when tourism was beginning and new homes were […]
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This Old Store: Happy Herman’s Market in Sister Bay
After weeks of scrubbing, painting and stocking shelves, Herman and Keta Steebs opened Happy Herman’s Market the week before Christmas in 1956. John Kopitzke ran a half-page ad in the Door Reminder and, as Keta said, “inadvertently became our first customer by buying a nickel candy bar.” Keta’s brother-in-law, Wesley Landstrom, made a huge, plywood […]