Meat Shop on Main Street

The family business for my Read ancestors in Barren County, Kentucky was a butcher shop. My 3rd-great-grandfather Guilford Dudley Read ran a butcher shop from at least 1870 (he appears as a butcher in the 1870 US Census), if not earlier. The shop was G. D. Read & Co. His son Charles Read later took over the family business.

I have wondered about the location of the shop in Glasgow, Kentucky. I'm not certain this is the one, but a meat shop appears on the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Glasgow in 1916 (see image below, bottom right corner on East Main Street). There are also two other meat shops on South Green Street, but another piece of information confirms that at one time the family shop was on Main Street.

Source: Kentucky Digital Archive

In The National Provisioner, Volume 52, Part 1, dated 9 January 1915, there is a line about this butcher shop. This was the official magazine of the American Meat Packers Association. "The butcher shop on Main Street, Glasgow, Ky., conducted by Charles Read, has been destroyed by fire." Given a day for the fire to make it into the AMPA news, I suspect the fire occurred in the later half of 1914. I've asked a helpful researcher to look for a local news articles on the fire.

In a separate news clipping, from the 17 August 1922 Glasgow Republican, "Mr. Alvin Read who has been running a meat shop under the name Goff & Read, has gone to Indianapolis to make his home. Tuesday evening a telegram was received by his wife [my great-grandmother Elizabeth Lois Whitley Read] saying he was badly injured, and for her to come at once, and she left to be with him. We are not informed of the extent of his injury."

My Grandma Lois had an older sister, Martha Belle "Mattie" Whitley, who married Clifton Goff. He had a flour mill. My Grandfather Leo Read was living in the household of Clifton and Mattie Goff in the 1930 US Census in Glasgow, Kentucky.

The 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map shows the meat shop on Main Street, just around the block from the Barren County Courthouse. Although there is a meat shop on Green Street, given the date, I think the Main Street shop was likely the Read family shop.

Source: Kentucky Digital Library, 1909 Sanford Fire Insurance Map