Imagine yourself packing up your cherished belongings but leaving behind all but the most essential items needed for survival. The year is 1835, you are saying goodbye to friends and family, not knowing if you will ever see them again. Yearning for places unseen, hoping to outrun the Cholera and food shortages, all to have a chance to have land to call your very own. You even dream of the praries or mountain side of what could be your new home.

One thing is for sure is your survival depends on hard work and your ability to use resources that are available. Most of your time will be used to gather in food and store it for the upcoming winter. Years pass and now after a century plus some, we are able to pick up those items that were so hard to come up with by visiting the local general store. It is where the townspeople would have come to purchase their supplies. From flour & clothing to pots and wagons, the mercantile provided everything the town folk might require to live their daily lives.

The Kirby Mercantile was the first building finished at Cartwright Grove. Its first opening was for the Christmas Holiday Festival in December 2014. Our mercantile was named Kirby Mercantile several years later in honor of Hugh & Jill Kirby , the builders & coordinators of the Cartwright Grove township.

The Kirby Mercantile houses the homemade baked goods during our Haunted Fall Festival in October & Christmas Holiday Festival in December. Its features include hot cocoa, apple cider & popcorn along with all the delicious baked goods. The mercantile also houses an old megaphone record player & a hand and foot operated clothes washer and wringer that dates back to the late 1880's. There is also a weight scale dating back to 1895 is on display.

The mercantile hosts are Edna McCoy, Kirsten Martin & Elaine Simmons who do an incredible job each opening using their decorating talents to make the mercantile "the place to visit" for all your hunger needs! Be sure you come by to see them the next time you come and get a tasty treat.