DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the McNab Grocery, up in Dallas County. Now, every good story starts with land — and this one's no different. After the Civil War, a man by the name of Ahab Bowen came to own this patch of ground.
Back then it wasn't a corner store. It was grape vineyards and small farms, the kind of place that moved slow and smelled sweet. Bowen held onto it a good while, and then in 1891 he sold the lot to a fellow named J.
B. Franklin. Franklin didn't waste any time.
He put up a brick structure — solid, the kind of building that says it plans to stick around. And stick around it did. Before long, a neighborhood grocery took root inside those walls, run by a man named James McNab in partnership with William A.
Boren and Thomas M. Cullum. Now, you might want to hold onto that name Cullum, because he and Boren would go on to found the Cullum and Boren Sporting Goods business.
But that came later. For the time being, these three men were in the grocery trade, serving the neighborhood. Out back, a livery stable housed a horse and a delivery wagon — because in those days, your groceries didn't always come to you on their own.
Meanwhile, a civic leader named Frederick Appell held part ownership in that building, and he kept it right up until his death in 1943. James McNab himself passed in 1924. But the building kept right on doing what brick buildings do — outlasting the people inside them.
Other grocers moved through that structure, one after another, all the way into the 1950s. A lot of hands, a lot of years, all flowing through a building that started as farmland and ended up as a corner of Dallas history.
What the marker says
After the Civil War Ahab Bowen acquired this land, then an area of grape vineyards and small farms. In 1891 he sold the lot to J. B. Franklin, who erected this brick structure. James McNab (d. 1924) operated a neighborhood grocery here in partnership with William A. Boren and Thomas M. Cullum, who later founded the Cullum and Boren Sporting Goods business. A livery stable in the rear housed a horse and delivery wagon. Civic leader Frederick Appell retained part ownership in the building until his death in 1943. Other grocers occupied the structure until the 1950s.