Historic Plymouth Discovery of Conner Hardware on Main St

169 Adams Street. (current photo shown) This home appears to be simply another older home that sits in a well-established neighborhood. Well, it’s a home with a “past” unlike most houses. Back in the 1850’s Plymouth did not have an actual hardware store. Michael Conner was the first proprietor of such an establishment. Conner hardware was located on Main Street near the corner of Sutton Street (now Penniman Ave). Conner’s became a popular place for folks to gather, sit on the porch and discuss the latest news and gossip. Mr. Conner loved to discuss political matters with the townspeople and had even served as the Village President. In 1884 Michael Conner built a new store (see historical photo). In 1896 Michael had passed away and his son William Conner (who had served as the store manager) was now running the establishment. In 1898 William built the now iconic Conner building that sits at the North West corner of Main & Penniman (where Kilwin’s resides today). As for the old wooden structured store, the assumption was that it was razed and had become history. After doing some research at the Plymouth Historical Museum, I stumbled across some documentation showing that the hardware store was actually moved to 169 Adams Street and originally became the home of Mr & Mrs Farwell. Since the move, this structure has seen some significant changes but upon further inspection, its past becomes very apparent. So we are pleased to re-discover this great piece of Plymouth history!

The second part of this story is the announcement of a new web page that was created for the world to enjoy the rich heritage of our community. As a volunteer at the Plymouth Historical Museum, I have simply been intrigued by the stories behind many of the homes and structures here in Plymouth. My family and I first started posting photos of our “discoveries” on facebook and named our page PlymouthMiDiscoveries. Now, in partnership with the Plymouth Historical Museum, we are pleased to announce the creation of www.PlymouthMiDiscoveries.com . This will be a page for all to enjoy, read, comment and see more photographs and additional information than our facebook page.  As we progress, we hope to show many more historical photos and look forward to posting many more homes and structures. We hope you join us along the way as we “discover” more Plymouth history!

In order to raise awareness and to get more people in our community to share the history of our wonderful town, we ask that you please “share” this story with others and/or “like” our pages on facebook: www.facebook.com/PlymouthMiDiscoveries and www.facebook.com/PlymouthHistory so that we can all inform more people in our community and beyond of what we are doing to keep history alive. Your sharing and/or “liking” our pages is a quick and easy way to show your support on-line. We greatly appreciate your sharing this story and we hope to see you soon at the Museum!

The Plymouth Historical Museum is located at 155 S. Main Street, Plymouth, MI 48170 and the Phone number is (734) 455-8940.