How My Great-Granduncles “Caught” a Store in the Ohio River!
For nearly 90 years a country store on 2nd street in the small town of Syracuse, Ohio along the Ohio River served locals under a few different names - Nease Brothers General Merchandise, Harden Grocery, and Baer’s Market. The building itself has sat in Syracuse for 113 years as of this writing. I had always been told by my grandmother about how the store was “caught in the river” on a sandbar! So I thought I’d do a little more digging into it and see what I could find about this place. Sure enough, an old article from the local paper (and now defunct) Times-Sentinel in 2000 helped corroborate the tale, although I didn’t really doubt her as she was in the Nease/Harden family and very good friends with the late Helen Baer, who was one of the last owners there.
The story, as I had been told, was that during The Great Flood of 1913, brothers Harvey and Earl Nease of Syracuse, Ohio (born 1875 and 1879, respectively) actually DID capture a building that was floating down the Ohio River and wedged into a sandbar somewhere near town. The two brothers dismantled the building, numbering the lumber, and were able to find and contact the owner who lived up river 60 miles in Marietta, Ohio. The building owner owned a sawmill business and realized that it would not be economically feasible to ship the disassembled building back up the river as he could just cut and rebuild another cheaper. The owner decided just to give it to the two men to do as they see fit. (A side note – I have attached a few 1913 flood photos of Syracuse, Ohio, one showing the home of Nease family in town.)
The two Nease brothers seized upon the opportunity that literally floated into their lives and created Nease Brother’s General Merchandise. Included on this page is an undated photo of an unidentified girl and you can see how the building originally looked in the background. Also, a photo is included here of a late 1920s handheld fan that I have from the Nease store advertising Putnam Dyes, unfortunately with a broken handle! Older brother Harvey (married to Eva, one of the daughters of local Judge Morton Webster) passed away in 1936, but Earl and his wife Ora (born Ora Wease in 1881) operated that general store for several decades, going well into the 1950’s. Eventually Morris Harden, who was the son of Earl’s adopted sister Mary Florence Nease (Harden/Potts), would work in the store and eventually take it over after Earl Nease’s passing in 1962 – thus creating ‘Harden Grocery’. The Harden Grocery photo shown here was taken in 1964 and shows the Harden family standing in front of the store. My late grandmother, Mary Harden Lisle, took the photo of her mother, stepfather, and brothers. Shown in this image are newer steps that the Harden’s had built by George Donovan that replaced the three original large river sandstone steps that led to the door for decades.
The late Helen Baer (1926-2009) had been working for the Rizer family since her late teens running their gas station and grocery in Syracuse where 3rd Street/124 and Dusky Street “Y”. When the Rizers closed their store, Baer wanted to purchase a store to run for herself. Helen Baer bought the Harden Grocery down the road from Morris Harden and ‘Baer’s Market’ would be created in 1970. Helen would eventually add more floor space to the building and a newer entrance on the side with parking, which would become the main entry way to the store, as seen in the 2017 image that I included. Along side the late Alberta Hubbard, the store would operate for over thirty years more.
On a personal note, in the 1970s and early 80s I loved stopping by the store when I was a young kid. Since Helen and my family were close, she would always let me walk behind the counter and pick out a piece of candy to have. I almost always remember grabbing a sleeve of Sixlets! Of course, at that young age I had no idea about the history of Helen, the building, and my family. I just thought this nice lady liked to give me candy! I also visited the Helen and the store decades later as I was nearby attending Ohio University. I remember she once offered to sell me her Slush Puppy machine that she was no longer using! As tempting as it was to have one of my own in college, I passed on that, but it does make me chuckle.
In 2009 Helen Baer would pass away in a car accident while she was having a medical emergency while driving. As I would visit Syracuse in the years since, I would often drive by and see the store in various states of business. Mostly empty/closed, but then sometimes being used as a thrift shop or the like.
If you have any other information, photos, or anecdotes to add to this, please do contact me at [email protected]. A lot of this information I’ve presented was passed down to me, but I have been able to substantiate much of it with U.S. Census records, family photos, obituaries, Ancestry.com, and the article that I’ve included from the Times-Sentinel with Helen Baer.
