Old US Post Office in Winchester, Texas 78945 - U.S. Post Offices on Waymarking.com

A Brief History of Winchester, TX
Murphy’s Steakhouse, located in Winchester Texas, in the northwest portion of Fayette County near the intersection of FM roads 153 and 448, named for Winchester Tennessee, is on a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The area was first settled in 1827 and platted in 1857 and was one of the first settlements in Fayette County.
A Post Office was established in 1866, which is still in existence and by the 1900 the town had eighteen businesses, which included, a courthouse, two jails (white and black), a bank, two doctors, two drug stores, a hotel, two saloons, a liquor store, a gambling house, two cotton gins, four churches, which are still in existence, two public schools (white and black), a theater, an opera house, three meat markets, a gristmill, a lumber yard, a hardware store, and several merchandise stores.
As a shipping point on the Waco branch of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway, the community served a wide area of prosperous farms.

A Brief History of the Building
The building was built in 1913 by German immigrant C.H. Schmidt. He came from Germany in 1890 and married Miss Anna Schulze in 1891 and built their first store. Mr. Schmidt started as a shoemaker, and his wife baked cookies to sell in the store, along with sardines, sauerkraut in barrels, and bought produce and poultry from the local farmers and shipped them to Houston for resale. They eventually outgrew two buildings, before they established the present building, which allowed them to start purchasing sugar, flour, coffee, seed fertilizer, and grain that was delivered by the carloads by the trains.
In 1921 Mr. Schmidt died, and Anna went into partnership with Mr. Monroe Harris. In 1973 Mr. Harris died, and his son Calvin Henry Harris took over, and named it the Harris General Merchandise Store, managed by Melvin Pietsch beginning in 1960. Since then the building has changed hands several times and is now owned by Richard Orona and Georgianna Fox, purchased from Prince “Boykie” and Sherry Murphy in January 2005, and is largely in its original condition, such as the old tin ceiling, brick walls, and an intriguing mirrored bar.

Type of structure:: Stand alone re-enter Zip Code here:: 78945 Current Status:: Still in Use

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Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   04/06/2011 TXLoneRanger visited it