Have I said this before? We just never know what we’ll find when going through negatives from the Orman Collection and it’s almost like being a kid at Christmas. So, when we found an envelope with the inscription “Been selling Standard Oil Products for 51 years in 1938” we were more than a little intrigued. Inside the envelope were a series of photographs of Mr. and Mrs. T. E. Scales operating their store and Esso station. A little math and you’ll know that means Mr. Scales was a Standard Oil dealer starting in 1887. That’s impressive.
Like many of the photos we find, we were not sure just where this store was located. As we always do, we sent the photo link to some folks to see if they might know anything about the Scales and we ask visitors to the gallery too. Our friends Linda and Michelle took on the challenge and did some digging at the Maury County Archives. Not finding any business that was a match here in Columbia, they decided to try a neighboring county. Amazingly, they discovered that Thomas Scales was the proprietor of a store in this time period in College Grove in Williamson County according to Census records.
Thanks ladies! There’s still so much me we would like to know; Is the store and home still standing? Are there any relatives in the area? Who remembers the Scales or maybe remembers the store? Do you know? We’d love to hear from you.