This sign was a grocery store bulletin board collected from a country store in Plymouth, Vermont, the birthplace of President Calvin Coolidge. The president’s father, John Coolidge, owned a country store in the town from 1868 until 1917. Florence Cilley continued to operate the store from 1917 until 1945. It is not known if this sign came from the Coolidge store or another country store in Plymouth, but the Coolidge/Cilley country store history provides a model for the role a typical country store played in rural communities across the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the Grange Movement took off after the Civil War, country stores became the nerve centers of rural communities, providing credit or barter in locally grown crops in defense against railroad monopolies. A fraternal and lobbying organization for farmers, the Grange Movement achieved rural mail delivery for rural areas and funding for agricultural colleges. The Coolidge store offered space in a second story large vaulted room for weekly Grange dances and family reunions. Store owner John Coolidge served as the town’s notary public and administered the presidential oath of office to his son following the death of President Warren Harding in 1923, and the store took on the role of Summer White House during Coolidge’s administration. But as the Grange Movement illustrates, the country store played a central role in politics of rural towns long before the Coolidge presidency. The bulletin board and bellied stove provided the center for political and business exchange, crop-growing and harvesting advice, local and national news, and storytelling. The Coolidge country store is now available for public viewing at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth, Vermont, where “buying local” is not a new idea and political news goes beyond national televised coverage.
This cigar store Indian was used as an advertisement for D. F. Saylor’s Pennsylvania tobacco shop during the late 19th and early 20th century. The Indian holds a bundle of cigars in one hand and a tobacco leaf in the other. He stands on a four-sided pedestal that has writing on each side: “145/D. F. Saylor/Cigars, Tobacco, Candy”—“Smoke/50-50/Cigar”—“El Wadora/5¢/Cigar” and “Thank You! Call Again.” The pedestal also advertises a shoe shine. Indians were associated with tobacco since they introduced it to Europeans, and advertisers played upon these stereotypes to hawk their wares to illiterate consumers.
This inn owner took visible pride in his country’s new national identity. The image displayes a bald eagle with a puffed chest displaying the Great Shield of 13 red, white and blue stripes representing the unified states of the young nation. One talon holds an olive branch; the other talon holds 13 arrows. His beak holds a scroll inscribed “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one). The original artistic rendering proposed by William Barton to Congress met disapproval by Benjamin Franklin and other political leaders. But following congressional approval in 1782 of the image as the Great Seal of the United States, images of bald eagles and colorfully striped shields could be found everywhere in the nation’s visual landscape, from coinage to ships’ figure heads, furnishings to textiles, and on signs such as this one.
Taverns were not new to this country at the time this sign was painted. Puritans had first sought to regulate consumption of liquor in the 17th century through building of “Ordinaries” or “Public Houses.” By the 18th century, such inns were known as “Taverns,” a familiar and welcome sight for travelers traversing coach, or post, roads. Such “Houses of Entertainment” not only provided comfort and convenience to long-distance travelers but sociability for locals. Not only were food and liquor sales offered, but also a variety of music, games, stories, humor, as well as more serious news and opinion-sharing, providing a sense of home beyond the home as well as mental escape.