“Bring me your chickens and eggs. I have several hundred yards of gingham at 12 cents per yard, and a nice line of shoes cheap. - A. D. McDonald.”
 
So reads an ad in the April 23, 1923, edition of the Ozark County Times, the first mention found of A. D. McDonald’s new general store on the square in Gainesville.

While the sign painted onto the bricks above the old McDonald building says, “since 1922,” stories in the Times indicate that McDonald didn’t actually purchase the business from Parker and Wood until March 1, 1923.

Regardless of the exact date McDonald opened his store, the Ozark County Genealogical and Historical Society is happy that the old building will become the organization’s new home, to be called the Ozark County Historium.

OCGHS president John Ault said the group wants to “establish a place Ozark County can be proud of, a place where we can preserve the rich heritage of the wonderful place where some of us now live and where many of you lived at one time. We want to have a place where, when you return to your roots, you can stop by and relive the past.”
OCGHS members attending a Feb. 11 meeting voted unanimously to cooperate with the Ruby Robins Trust for the Preservation of Local history to buy the McDonald building from Rebecca McNew Beard, daughter and heir of the late Larry McNew, who had operated a pawn shop there for several years. Mr. McNew died late last year. The two groups created a separate, nonprofit entity, the Ozark County Historium, Inc., and the sale was completed April 13.
Renovations and fund-raising are now under way. 
 
A place where friends gathered
The McDonald building has a warm, rich history in Gainesville. For decades, it housed a store that served not only as a place to buy the necessities and luxuries of the day but also as a place to visit friends and learn the news.

An April 23, 1953 Times story about the store’s 30th anniversary said a bench and chairs that McDonald placed around a stove in the back of the store near the stove for the comfort of his customers were not found in any other Gainesville stores.
“Mr. McDonald feels that the space has repaid him many times over because of its drawing power. This is certainly one place where friends meet, and invariably, each friend becomes a lasting customer,” the article reported.

Alva McDonald, the son of George and Julia Early McDonald, was born in Gainesville on Aug. 14, 1895. He married Delphia Martin, daughter of Sam and Ollie Mahan Martin, on Sept. 20, 1914. Delphia’s father had been a merchant at Lutie and Pontiac, Mo., and at Oakland, Ark.
The McDonalds had four daughters and one son. The son, Mearle, died as an infant, but the daughters married and lived most of their lives in Gainesville – for many years within sight of their parents’ home. The daughters were Alma Luna, Beulah, “Toots” Carter, Genelle Breeding and Mary Ruth Landers. Today Mary Ruth lives in Raymore; her parents and siblings are deceased.
 
“I think my Grandpa (Sam Martin) set my dad up in business,” Mary Ruth said in a recent interview. Before that, her parents had tried farming on the White River at Oakland , she said.
 
Sam Martin took his son-in-law to Gassville, Flippin and Mountain Home, Ark., looking for a place where he could run a store.
 
“Of course, it ended up being in Gainesville,” Mary Ruth said. “My dad loved Gainesville.”
 
Starting over after the fire
The McDonalds first lived just a few doors off the square, on Main Street, where the telephone office is now. They moved to High Street before Mary Ruth was born on Oct. 30, 1924.  The night the store burned, in February 1929, she remembers looking out the window and seeing the glow of the fire. She was 4 years old.
 
George McDonald, Alva’s father, was sleeping upstairs in the store at the time it caught fire in the wee hours of a Sunday morning.  According to the Feb. 15, 1929, Ozark County Times account, the fire started in the back of the Luna barber shop, which Mary Ruth thinks was in the feed room adjoining the McDonald store. While George McDonald escaped unharmed, the store and all its contents were quickly destroyed.

Snow on the roofs of other buildings around the square helped prevent the fire from spreading. But merchandise from nearby Ford’s Store and papers from the Bank of Gainesville were carried out, just in case. The Times reported that the offices of two doctors, chiropractor J. L. Beason and Dr. H. E. Pace, were destroyed in the fire. Mary Ruth remembers that Dr. Beason had his office on the balcony inside the store. She does not remember Dr. Pace having an office there.
Alva soon had the store rebuilt.
 
Playing among the feed sacks
According to the Ozark County Times, the store was open every day, including Sundays and holidays, until about 1950. It also stayed open relatively late at night – until after the bus from Springfield arrived with the newspaper or until after the movie was over, if one was showing in town. “There was no definite closing time,” the Times reported.
 
“People would wait for the bus and the paper or wait to see who might be coming in on the bus,” Mary Ruth Landers said. “When the theatre opened (about 1940), people brought their kids to town to see a show. They would stay at the store until after the movie was over.” 
 
In the store’s early days, harnesses, horseshoes and similar items were in demand.  Customers brought eggs, chickens and cream to sell or exchange for goods. Feed sacks for poultry and livestock were available for purchase in the side room. For decades, children loved to play among the feed sacks in the side room.
 
Mary Ruth said people came to town on Saturday and would stay all day. Their kids came too. The kids never seemed to bother Alva. “He loved kids,” Mary Ruth said. “He had a big heart.”
 
She said she and her sisters were always free to get candy and pop from the store. “We got whoever was with us one too,” she said. “Maybe my dad would have done better if he’d been more stingy,” she said, laughing.
Later, after Alva had refrigeration and sold ice cream, he would give the leftovers from the big ice cream cartons to kids in the store.
A Delco generator provided electricity at the store until an electric plant was put in at Gainesville. But there was no running water at the store until “city water” came to the town.
Genelle McDonald Breeding sometimes set up a lemonade stand in front of the store. “Of course, she got everything out of the store,” Mary Ruth said. Everything except the water. that is. She probably went in back and got water from Alta Boone’s nearby well, Mary Ruth said.
Today, Mary Ruth marvels at how, in the early days, eggs and cream were not refrigerated at the store.   “Usually they had the cream in cream cans. They might buy it on Saturday, and Uncle Rufus (who drove a truck) might not take it to Springfield until Sunday. Now, people are so conscious of fresh stuff,” she said. “When we lived in Michigan, my dad sent me a crate of eggs by some people who were coming up. I guess I put them in the refrigerator and used them until they were all gone.” No one got sick, she said.
 
Arguments over the checkerboard
Alva’s brother-in-law, Rufus Luna, and Delphia’s uncle, Newt Martin, played many hours of checkers up in the store’s balcony.
“Sometimes they would get into arguments,” Mary Ruth said, “and it would get pretty bad. My dad would take their checkerboard and not let them play for a while. But they were good friends.”
 By 1953 there was no reason for the store to be open on holidays and Sundays. The Times reported that the store usually closed about 7 p.m.

Mary Ruth isn’t sure what led Alva to sell the store to Alma’s husband, Gene Luna, in February 1956. “Dad wasn’t well, and Mama had arthritis real bad. I guess it was just time for him to quit.”
 
Alva died Oct. 1, 1961. Delphia lived until Jan. 15, 1980. They are both buried in the Gainesville Cemetery.
 
New life for an old building
 Mary Ruth said she and her family are pleased that the OCGHS has bought her dad’s old store building for its home. John Ault said the OCGHS hopes to restore the store’s balcony and old-style tin ceiling to the way they might have looked 70 or 80 years ago.

Ault hopes the building, now called the Historium, will provide “an atmosphere that will attract current residents of Ozark County and visitors from afar.” 

©Ozark County Times