Turner's Country Store

This site was occupied in the antebellum period by a store owned by Marshall Frazier, a prosperous Edgefield planter, and until the end of the 19th century the location was known as Frazier's Corner. The present building was erected on the site in early 1885 by Edgefield merchant J.M. Cobb after the devastating fire of 1884, and he operated a dry goods business here until 1891, when he moved next door to a larger building. In the fall of 1900, W.H. Turner, an Edgefield native who had established his business in town as early as 1884, opened The Corner Store here, and the Turner family owned and operated the business for almost a century. In later years, Turner's son Wiley H. "Bub" Turner, Jr., and daughter-in-law Gladys Lyon Turner took over the Edgefield store, and under their leadership Turner's Country Store became the leading department store in Edgefield, selling everything from dresses to furniture. In the 1940s and 1950s they carried out major modernizations and expansions, extending the building to Buncombe and Simkins Streets. In the early 1960s, their daughter Margaret Sue Turner Jolly and her husband Clarence R. Jolly came to Edgefield and assumed management of the store. Clarence R. Jolly became known across the region as a talented merchant whose fashion flair broadened The Corner Store's reach and reputation; during this period Mamie Eisenhower shopped here while visiting Augusta. He also gained a region-wide reputation for directing and promoting theatrical productions, later shifted his business toward selling high-fashion women's wear through home shows along the eastern seaboard, and used this building as the headquarters for his multi-million-dollar sales company. After his death, his wife and later his sons continued the business until about 1993, completing more than a century of retail sales in Edgefield by the Turner family.

Edgefield, South Carolina · United States