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The Searcy Cotton and Oil Company. Old picture from our home town.

By
Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Advantage

Searcy Cotton & Oil

One of the pictures that I have borrowed from friends in order to place it on this blog is this photo of The Searcy Cotton and Oil Co. That the company was in the present day industrial area is the only information that I could find.  If any of you Searcy readers come up with more information, share it with us.

Dr. Raymond Muncy wrote a book called "Searcy, Arkansas.  A Frontier Town Grows Up With America" in 1976 and the book includes this photograph.  It contains lots of information about Searcy AR and lots of photos.  For searching Searcy history, it is probably the best but I didn't find anything more about this business.

Show All Comments
Gary Woltal
Keller Williams Realty - Flower Mound, TX
Assoc. Broker Realtor SFR Dallas Ft. Worth

Hi Barbara. I just so love your older photos. I always feel I am in a time machine and stepping right back into the past.

Nov 13, 2008 12:40 PM
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Gary,  thanks for stopping by and seeing the old photos. 

Nov 13, 2008 01:30 PM
Don Thompson
Donthomp Associates - Sunnyvale, CA

Here's another cotton shot from 1910. This one looks like cotton farmers hauling their bales down a Searcy street. There's a dapper gentleman holding a wad of cotton for the photographer. One can't help being drawn to those Zeno posters with the message Great Cash Prize Contest Don't Wait Start Today Saving ...... Can't make out what Zeno represents. Then there's the sign for Snipes Drug Store, the largest at the time.

Lots of interesting things in this photo postcard from 1910.

 

Postcard

 

 

Nov 14, 2008 01:24 AM
Mary PAUL, ABR, CRS,GRI, e-PRO,
RE/MAX Advantage Realtors, Searcy, AR - Searcy, AR

Barbara,

Great post, I love the old photos, a reminder of how things used to be.  We are quite lucky, don't you think?

Nov 14, 2008 01:49 AM
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Mary, aren't the memories of old days fun.....just don't want to live them anymore!

Don, thanks for posting that picture.  It goes well with what I put up.  In "The Humorous History of White County" by Claude Johnson he lists the businesses and dates and he gave this one as March 7, 1903.  So these dates also line up pretty well.

Nov 14, 2008 02:03 AM
Anonymous
Anita Fuller

barbara, I don't have a clue about this picture and certainly no memories.  I did google: Searcy, Ark. cotton seed and  oil mill and found a little blurb about Searcy and it mentions things searcy had at that time and a cotton seed oil mill was mentioned.  (not that I was disputing it's existence)....

Keep on keeping on.....but I personally would live in the past if only I could.  I want to live from 1945 to 1955, maybe until 1959.

Anita Fuller

Nov 14, 2008 02:20 AM
#6
Anonymous
Anita Fuller

barbara, I don't have a clue about this picture and certainly no memories.  I did google: Searcy, Ark. cotton seed and  oil mill and found a little blurb about Searcy and it mentions things searcy had at that time and a cotton seed oil mill was mentioned.  (not that I was disputing it's existence)....

Keep on keeping on.....but I personally would live in the past if only I could.  I want to live from 1945 to 1955, maybe until 1959.

Anita Fuller

Nov 14, 2008 02:20 AM
#7
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Anita, you're so funny!  You want to relive and wander around forever in that fairy-land childhood that you lived.  LOL  Did I ever put up that picture with you holding the fiddle   violin and dressed in the fancy long dress along with all the other lucky kids?  If not, I need to do that.

Nov 14, 2008 02:27 AM
Elizabeth Weintraub Sacramento Broker
Elizabeth Anne Weintraub, Broker - Sacramento, CA
Put 40 years of experience to work for you

Barbara: Where are the horses in your photo? And the people? The cotton mill looks deserted. Maybe somebody shot that photo right before they tore it down?

elizabeth weintraub land park real estate agent in sacramento

Nov 14, 2008 10:24 AM
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Elizabeth, leave it to you to ask hard questions!  I think the people showed up in Don's picture!

Nov 14, 2008 10:38 AM
Anonymous
Ludean

Barbara, those are precious pictures.  I THINK this was down and across from the old stave mill on Cotton Street, [now Remington].  When I was a kid, I remember that across a field from the end of E. South Line, [now E. Woodruff], there was a cotton gin.  My sister agrees and said she used to play around the water tower.  The old cotton compress was located in that area,too.  Our next door neighbor was a watchman at the compress.  He was the father of John and Collet Davis.  John and Collet both worked for the railroad that ran by the stave mill and up to Main St. 

Nov 14, 2008 11:12 AM
#11
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Ludean, thanks!!  You are a wealth of knowledge about Searcy and I appreciate your sharing it!!  You even remember the streets original names like Cotton and E. South Line!!

Nov 14, 2008 11:57 AM
Don Thompson
Donthomp Associates - Sunnyvale, CA

An explanation of the Zeno posters was given in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette today 2/10/09.

 

Note the posters for the “Zeno Great Cash Prize Contest,” an essay competition focusing on questions relating  to philosophy and religion. Still held annually by some educational institutions, the contest takes its name from Zeno, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in southern Italy in the fifth century B.C.

Feb 10, 2009 01:03 AM
Don Thompson
Donthomp Associates - Sunnyvale, CA

One more piece of information about the cotton marketing pic. Harold has identified the Snipes Drug Store building as the future Headlee Drug Store. The clue is the stairs just visible at the far left.

Here's the Headlee building again for comparison. The painted on sign is at about the same spot in each picture.

Feb 11, 2009 05:11 AM
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Thanks, Don.  Read today's blog!

Feb 11, 2009 05:33 AM
Anonymous
john sanderson

That Headlees Drug store would be Simpson law office nowm would it not..... or the old shoe Store

Aug 29, 2009 09:27 AM
#16
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

John, you're right.  They have made it look really nice but I do miss the old signs painted on the sides of the brick buildings.  I blogged about them too somewhere back there.

Aug 29, 2009 10:10 AM
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