Ole Smoky History
This catalog was created in response to our many fine customers' requests to make our products more easily available to them. It is our way of sharing the spirit of the "General Store" of times past.The Ole Smoky General Store was an idea made into an authentic reality through the use of artifacts, store fixtures, and shelving found in a 1893 general store in Clyo, Georgia.
| Clyo began as an English Settlement on the Southern bank of the Savannah River. Mr. Ransley Burge Mallory Sr., an Englishman, was the store originator. His son, Spencer, assisted his father and then continued operation of the store following the death of his Father until the early 60's. Mr. Spencer Mallory invited us to visit the store, which is still standing, in Clyo by the railroad tracks. |  |
While reminiscing with Spencer Mallory, we became very excited with the prospect of continuing this families' tradition and our Country's heritage. (The "General Store" of our past was the center of community activity.) We reached an agreement with Mallory to enhance our new store with some of his General Store's historical beginnings, thus the traditions would continue.
Our store in East Tennessee at present doesn't house the Post Office or serve as WPA distribution center....or even serve as an aviation lookout post as in World War II.... people don't cast votes at election time here, but politics are discussed....we don't have the Masonic Lodge meetings here and the only tax we collect is for the state, not the assessor and collector who worked out of the Clyo, Georgia store.
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However we do serve as a meeting place for folks all around the country and our friendly "Store Keepers" will show you some very interesting treasures from the past. Many of the products we sell are replicas of the "General Store" era as well as locally made items for the home and family. |
Examples of these items that you may purchase are in our new catalog are:
- sturdy wooden rockers
- well seated porch swings
- wooden children's furniture
- wooden kitchen accessories
- colored vintage glassware
- fine quality country hams and smoked bacon
- matching old fashioned wash bowls and pitchers
- barber mugs and soap dishes
- cookbooks with Appalachian recipes
- buckets and wash tubs
- "DIETZ" and "ALLADIN" lamps and replacement parts
- old fashioned toys for children and adults
- miniatures from past eras
- nostalgic signs and tins
- wonderful wire notions
- assorted collector items
- jams, jellies, spices, scents, extracts
- genuine "LODGE" Ironware
- pumps
- water purifiers
- engine treatment products
- "LIFEPINE" (fire retardant) shakes for your roof
Mountain Tales
"The early settlers were hard-working people as would be any pioneers and to them everything had a use. A patch of corn meant meal for bread, corn and fodder for the livestock, and shucks for a mattress. Most of you probably never slept on a shuck or straw mattress; You have missed something. They used shucks for chair bottoms, and they are still used here now for making the best chair bottoms. Hides were made into leather for harness' and shoes; wool was spun into yarn and woven into clothing.Music was the banjo, and a banjo player was considered by some early settlers as a lazy, good-for-nothing somebody.
The early settlers were a hard-working, proud people and by some said to be a stubborn people. I can believe that, not going any farther back than my own dad. I have never forgotten a story he often told me about John Hampton and Ephriam Ogle's mule. My dad and John were farming land for Ephriam Ogle in lower Gatlinburg and went up together to get Ogle's mule for plowing. Ephriam told John the mule was stubborn and wild, and could not be rode. John tells Ephriam there was never a mule that he could not ride and got on. He gets along all right until they come to the mud hole that stayed in the road year round in front of I.L. Maples' home. There the mule stopped. John coaxed him out but could not get him to go; then he kicks him in the ribs. The mule kicks up, landing John in the middle of the mud hole. Dad says "he threw you didn't he John?" John says, "Well sorter did and sorter didn't; I was aiming to get off anyway."
There are two stories as to why the town was named Gatlinburg. One that Mr. Reagan liked Gatlin and wanted to name the village Gatlinburg, and the other that Mr. Gatlin would let him use his store as a post office if he would name the office Gatlinburg.
They tell that when a vote was taken in Sevier County at the outbreak of the Civil War, one vote was for secession. People believed that Mr. Gatlin cast that vote and he became very unpopular. He owned a slave and she had died; some thinking he had killed her. She was buried beside a store on what is now Hays House parking lot. He was also a Democrat which didn't help.
Misfortune had now caught up with Mr. Gatlin. He had been worth a lot of money and owned many acres of land, which he had now lost through a mortgage he had made to defend himself in a lawsuit which Tom Ogle had filed against him for accusing him of burning his barn; and which Mr. Gatlin lost.
A group of masked men visited him about this time and told him to get out of Gatlinburg. Gatlin left here, going to Straw Plains, where he remained until Union troops occupied, and he was captured. He later escaped and went to Atlanta, where he worked in the Provost Marshal's office throughout the rest of the war.
After the war he and Mrs. Gatlin were taken by friends to North Carolina - broke - where they lived out the rest of their lives."
(Excerpts from a speech made by Rellie Dodgen in 1952, as told in "Mountain Ways: An Album of the Smokies", by Gene Aiken.
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