Lockhart and Oxley

This was the site of Floyd Alexander ‘Alec’ Bolin’s Star Market. He had about everything you could ask for from peppermints to Kenosha Krotch overalls. John Matt Cook was a clerk in the store then later opened his own store in what is now known as the Sweet Shop Building. Alec Bolin’s store burned in the fire of 1912 that started in the Odd Fellows Building. The building was torn down and a larger building was erected. Lennie Bird Parker had a hardware store in the building for many years. Brown Scott had a grocery store there in the 1940s and sold it to Dean and Daniel Pettrey, Jr. who ran Pettrey Brothers, offering "Fancy Groceries," fresh meats and general merchandise. Dean Pettrey married Verlie White on August 18, 1937. In Verlie’s Diaries on August 25, 1937, she wrote “OH H___, What have I done, Oh me, Oh me.” 

The marriage was short lived. It isn’t known how short since Verlie’s diaries for 1938 and 1939 are missing. By 1940 Verlie was back at home with her mother and father and in 1950 the Pettrey brothers shared a home together, and still worked at their grocery store. In 1970, Dean, then living in Princeton, age 71, died after a short illness. Brother, Daniel Pettry, Jr. died in 1979. Verlie's diaries are reproduced in the Stories chapter of Athens We Knew.

From about 1952 to 1956 Perry Hill, teacher and coach at Athens High and his wife Jean Goode, opened Hill and Goode Grocery Store, offering groceries, meat and produce in the building. Next came Lochart and Oxley.

Doc Oxley (1878-1966), son of Benjamin H. Oxley and Nancy Vermillion Oxley, married Henrietta (Etta) Marnsey on January 26, 1910. Doc and Etta had several children: twins Nellie and Myrtle, Netti, James, Evelyn, and twins Anice and Eunice. Doc owned a considerable amount of property beside Concord College, then commonly known as the Oxley Estate.

Daughter Netti Rose Oxley married John Pleasants Lockhart. In 1957 John and his brother-in-law James Oxley opened the Lockhart and Oxley Grocery Store in the building. The store was a typical old time grocery. The floors were worn wood, the ceiling was tin tile, the checkout counter was to the right and the meat and cheese coolers were in the very back. Agnes Jones was hired to help John run the checkout counter and James was the butcher.

Lockhart and Oxley ran a line of credit for their customers and let them settle at the end of the month. Usually on a Saturday, one customer would walk in with her grocery list after walking all the way through Oxley Hollow. She would choose her groceries, box them up, and Charlie Mann, who was hired about 1959, would drive her back home in Lockhart and Oxley’s green Ford pickup truck. People would also call in their order and Charlie would deliver them.

John Lockhart died in 1969 and the grocery store was closed after that. The building was eventually demolished, as shown in the Change chapter.