Casimir Drugstore

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice passin' it along. Somewhere in Robertson County, after the year 1869, a man named Jean Pierre Casimir put up a building. He was a native of Toulouse, France, which is worth sayin' out loud just to let that detail breathe a moment.

A Frenchman, a long way from Toulouse, and he built something that was going to last. Jean Pierre Casimir, who died in 1929, constructed this structure sometime after 1869, and what went inside it was a drugstore. His family ran that drugstore right there in that building, year after year, all the way until 1949.

Now, that is a family business in the truest sense of the phrase. But here is the part that earns this place a little extra attention. Out back, there was a patio.

And that patio connected the drugstore to the Palace Opera House. The Palace Opera House. Not a modest little name.

And that opera house? Also owned and operated by the Casimir family. So you had the medicine and the music, the remedy and the performance, all tied together by a single family and a patio in between.

Jean Pierre Casimir came from Toulouse, France, built something after 1869, and the Casimir name held it all together until 1949. That, right there, is how a family plants itself in a place.

What the marker says

Sometime after 1869, Jean Pierre Casimir (d. 1929), native of Toulouse, France, built this structure. His family operated drugstore here until 1949. A patio in the rear connected drugstore to the Palace Opera House, also owned and operated by the Casimir family.