​Looking Back: Auto Sales on Main Street

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 

​The cars sold along Main Street and south of the railroad tracks are not the first automobiles to be sold in Grain Valley. Over 100 years ago, you could purchase a brand-new Buick from Clarence W. Childers, right on Main Steet! His dealership was in the Williams Building on the west side of Main, just north of the Bank of Grain Valley.

1925 Advertisement
 from The Oak Grove Banner
 
Childers was born in Stewartsville, Kentucky in 1874. He came to Missouri where he met and married his wife, Lucinda Bowen on November 24, 1898 in Jackson County. According to the 1920 U. S. Census, they owned a farm in Sni-A-Bar Township where they lived with their two daughters, Edith (born 1900, death unknown) and Margaret (1905-2004).

Another source gives his address as a farm in Lee’s Summit, but that could have been only a few miles out of Grain Valley. (Remember, the Lee’s Summit School District boundary is barely a mile west of Stony Point Elementary.) His occupation was listed as automobile company.

Clarence and Lucinda were still living in Sni-A-Bar township in 1935, however by that time the building on Main Street housed Storms Drug Store and a restaurant. By 1940 the Childers had moved to Independence, Missouri.
           
In 1925, Margaret married Vollie Hartley. Some readers may remember their business, Hartley Furniture Store in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
 
Coming in 2 weeks: Voices and Votes, Democracy in America at the Grain Valley Historical Society.  Join us for the ribbon cutting at 1:00pm on November 1st. 
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