J. Abraham “Abe” Bookman came from Ireland with his wife, Anna, and brother-in-law, Simon Sigman. By 1912, they had settled in Ingomar, where Bookman operated the town mercantile and Sigman served as postmaster. The business was so prosperous that when Bookman received a shipment of groceries and clothing at the depot, settlers waiting for the next train bought every item before it could be carried to the store. In 1914, Bookman’s success enabled him to finance Sigman’s opening of a general store in nearby Vananda. Although Rosebud County’s economy was in trouble by 1921 and many homesteaders had moved on, Ingomar’s commercial area remained relatively stable. After fire devastated the small district that year, a prominent brick building with a lively diamond pattern of polychromatic brick was built to replace Bookman’s original store. Later connected to its neighbor through an interior doorway, the well-preserved building remained a classic example of the commercial structures once common in small prairie settlements, with the intact survival of its two-bay storefront especially noteworthy. Although most Ingomar businesses closed during the 1920s and 1930s, the Bookmans struggled through hard times and the loss of their property at sheriff’s sale in 1933. They repurchased the store in 1935, and Abe kept the business until his death in 1941. Anna retired two years later and closed the store for good, marking the true end of Ingomar’s pioneer era.