Back in February, I wrote about my search for the second Marsh family grocery store, which once stood in teensy New Pittsburg, Indiana. Only fifty people lived there when Wilmer Marsh opened his store in 19281, and the only image I’d ever seen of the place was a tiny, blurry photo in the Marsh book Lasting Values. Recently, though, I stumbled across a couple of much better views thanks to SHAARD.
The Marsh family appears to have operated its New Pittsburg grocery until 19452. William and Laure Rickert ran the store for the next thirty-three years3, and at some point a small house was added to the building’s southeastern side4. Unfortunately, by the time I finally tracked down the property, the old grocery itself was long gone. The attached house was all that remained. Fortunately, SHAARD came to the rescue.
SHAARD -the Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database- is an enormous collection of cultural-resource information gathered from historic property surveys, National Register nominations, and other preservation projects. Its creation was supported by the Federal Highway Administration, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the Historic Preservation Fund of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the National Park Service. For people who like chasing down obscure old buildings that disappeared decades ago, it can be a gold mine.
SHAARD entries don’t always say much about a building’s actual history, and this one was no exception. Survey number 135-159-01002, completed in 1996, simply identified the old Marsh grocery as a “Community Building/House4.” Still, the survey recorded details I’d never known: like four plain, square wooden columns that supported the storefront. The building itself featured a concrete foundation and floor beneath a standing-seam metal roof. Its front windows had already been boarded up, but the doors still featured paneled kickboards. Transoms topped both the doors and windows5. More importantly, someone took pictures.
That was really all I needed. After years of knowing the second Marsh grocery store only through one fuzzy image, suddenly I could actually see the place. The SHAARD photos show the old storefront in far greater detail, along with the attached house when it was in much better shape than it is today. They even revealed a garage on the opposite side of the store that I never knew existed.
Finding these photos was immensely satisfying. The grocery itself is gone, and New Pittsburg isn’t exactly a place that generated mountains of historical documentation. Nevertheless, nearly thirty years ago, someone thought this unassuming old building was worth stopping to photograph and document. Thanks to that decision, we now have a much clearer look at the second store in what eventually became one of Indiana’s best-known supermarket chains.
Sources Cited
1 Pitts, E. (1998, April 27). She’s enjoyed life in the small town. The Muncie Star Press. p. 7.
2 William L. Rickert, 72 (1990, April 20).
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Survey Number 135-159-01002 (1996). IHSSI (County Survey). SHAARD. Indiana Department of Natural Resources [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
5 (See footnote 4).
