History Knox
Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a column each Saturday reflecting on the history of the community.
MOUNT VERNON — When we see a “drive in” sign on a building these days, it’s usually a place you can drive your car through in order to buy a pop and some chips.
But in 1913, it was the sign on the Buchmaster & Wertz Livery, Feed & Sale Barn in Mount Vernon.
A vintage photograph, donated to the Knox Time Collection by Vickie Clawson Adams, shows the establishment, which was located on the corner of West Ohio and South Mulberry Streets.
In the pre-automobile era, if you drove your horse or horse and buggy somewhere to do business for a period of time, you had to have a place to leave your horse and have it fed.
Livery stables were, in part, a period equivalent to today’s parking lots and parking garages, except that vehicle’s motor also needed fed. Most livery stables offered feed service and stable cleaning, though some were more do-it-yourself in setup.
It is likely that Buchmaster & Wertz was full service, because it was located in the center of a neighborhood that included three hotels no more than one block away: the Hotel Rowley and the St. James Hotel (formerly known as the Bergin House) on South Main, and the Cooper House, at the end of Mulberry Street.
As the sign also advertises “sales,” it is likely that this establishment rented out buggies as well.
According to writing on the back of the photo, three of the people in the picture are “Truman Davies, Wadell’s brother, and Rollie Spicer,” though it doesn’t identify which is which.
A date of 1913 is given. I wasn’t able to find a genealogical hit for Davies, but Rollie Spicer was born in Utica in 1893.
By 1912, he was living in Mount Vernon at 705 West Chestnut Street, where the city directory lists him as a painter.
A photo posted online at a genealogy website shows Rollie 25 years later with his three sisters, but neither it nor the original livery barn photo offer enough clarity to make a positive identification.
His sister Velma, though, had the married surname of Wadell, so perhaps “Wadell’s brother” is a brother-in-law to Rollie.
At any rate, Spicer later moved to Mansfield, and then Toledo, where he passed away in 1968.
By that time, livery stables were long gone as everyone had shifted to automobiles for transportation, and horses became a rarity on city streets.
The once busy livery barn on Ohio Street is today the parking lot behind Paragraphs Bookstore, so at least parking has remained the key activity in that spot.
