Here is another community food heritage site that is endangered. Memories of this place go back a long time.
Gray’s Store in Adamsville village brought in customers for years with its old-fashioned marble soda fountain, cigar and tobacco cases, and Rhode Island johnny cakes. The 224-year-old business may be the oldest operating general store in America, although others have staked similar claims.
The Rhode Island store near the Massachusetts line opened in 1788. Now owners say this year is its last. Gray’s is set to close Sunday afternoon. Owner Jonah Waite inherited the shop after his father died of cancer last month. He said Saturday it was a hard decision to close the store and leave behind all the history, but the shop’s finances aren’t sustainable and a supermarket down the street has siphoned away business.
The new owner’s great grandfather owned the store in the early 1900s and ran a gristmill to make his own corn meal that he sold in the store. In 2007, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and then-Gov. Donald Carcieri issued proclamations naming Gray’s as the oldest continuously run general store in the country. More customers than usual have been gathering at Gray’s in recent days to say farewell and share memories, Waite said. Bob Wordell, a mechanic down the street, remembers gathering at the store in the summer with his friends when he was a child years ago. “We’d eat freeze pops on the front steps,” Wordell told The Providence Journal. “I think they cost a nickel.” Read more
