HIGH POINT, Mo. - Mary Dillner grew up 5 miles from High Point and remembers bringing horses to town with her father to be shod at the blacksmith's shop. While they would wait, Dillner remembers visiting the Tising Store.
"It still has the shelves and ladders like I remember," Dillner said after a recent tour by owner Bev Meyer.
The J.F. Tising's Sons Store was featured on the Moniteau County Fair Centennial plate, which Dillner purchased from Meyer's antique store. Meyer is the fourth generation of the Tising family, which was active on the fair board for more than a quarter of the 20th century, to own and operate the mercantile.
But this fall, the three-building, historic streetscape will be on the auction block.
Meyer had been keeping the traditional store open on Saturdays, but quit after health issues in 2011. She has been taking visitors to the store by request, which once was a High Point School field trip tradition.
Meyer will continue to operate an antique store across Route C from the historic streetfront and also next door to her home, which her parents built in 1943 on the Missouri Century Farm property, west of the Tising Store.
Inside the century-old storefront are many of its original items, such as the curved glass display cases, the central pot-belly stove where many decades of gossip were passed, two antique safes and many pieces of High Point and Moniteau County history.
Meyer donated many of her Tising family ribbons and collectibles to the Missouri State Fair museum. The family dominated the state ham contest for years and many governors took home the prize.
John Frederick Tising was the son of Friedrich and Sophia, German immigrants who married in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840. They moved their family to Russellville before the Civil War began.
J.F Tising, born in 1841, served three months beginning August 1862 with the Union 43rd Enrolled Missouri Militia under Captain Twiehaus. He was mustered out in November 1864 after marrying Margaret Van Pool in January of that year.
After attending pharmacy school, J.F. opened a business in High Point in 1868. By 1874, he purchased the storefront from Dr. James and Virginia Dunlap and added the next-door mercantile in 1880.
Meyer's grandfather Lloyd took over the store from J.F. in 1912 and her great-grandfather died five years later. Her father, Mitchell, took over in 1949, when her uncle went into the service. Lloyd died in 1950.
Her father became sole owner in 1974. When he died in 1983, Meyer became the fourth generation to own and operate the business.
The property for sale has been a hub for the High Point community through more than a century, and represents a four-generation family legacy.