BBB Destination - Winston-Salem

In 1856 the Salem town board voted to remove a market from the town square. It so happened that in this same year Julius Mickey, a vigorous --"fun loving" is the phrase they used to describe him -- young merchant was seeking (1) a place to locate a grocery store and (2) a way for erecting a building on that place.

The town fathers solved both problems by selling the Salem Square market building to him and told him that he had permission to move the old building to a lot located on the southwest corner of Main and Belews streets.

There Mickey opened his store and, because there was vacant space in the old building's loft, a tin shop as well. In rather short order, Julius Mickey discovered that his services as a tinsmith were in greater demand than his tins, crocks and barrels of groceries.

In part this was true because he was a first rate craftsman. Then, too, there was the fact his location -- diagonally across Main Street from Winston and Salem's public camping ground which was set aside for visitors who came to town to sell their tobacco and to buy in the shops of the two villages -- was near ideal.

More important, however, was the fact that in those years before the Civil War tinware enjoyed a demand that was brisker than even that of aluminum today. The tin shop was the source of cups, plates, pots and pans of all sizes and types, coffee and tea pots, buckets and dippers, cake cutters, candle sticks and moulds, lanterns, buckets and pails and a variety of other kitchen and dining room ware. The tinsmith even provided bed warmers and spectacle cases.

But there were problems. One of the most disturbing was the fact that down the street there was another tinsmith, a somewhat unscrupulous fellow who did not hesitate to capture any person who came along and inquired where he could find the Mickey Tin Shop.

To put an end to that sort of nonsense, Julius Mickey built himself an enormous coffee pot so folks could find his shop. Contemporary records -- and some not so contemporary -- agree that this pot holds either 740 cups of 740 gallons of coffee.
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