The sale of the S. M. Mayhew Company general store in West Tisbury, reported as in progress by the Gazette some weeks ago, was completed last week and the business formally changed hands Saturday night. Charles A. Turner, proprietor, turned the business over to Albion A. Alley, long his chief clerk, and thus the establishment, conducted in the same building and on the same site since 1858, changed hands for the third time in its history. The several proprietors who have owned and operated the store were Nathan Mayhew, the founder, blacksmith and Forty-niner, his two sons, Sanderson M. and Ulysses E. Mayhew, who eventually succeeded him, Charles A. Turner, and, now, Mr. Alley.
 
A historic spot, and known for generations as “Sanderson’s” through the application of the name of one of the proprietors mentioned, the store was maintained as the typical cross-roads grocery and general store of New England through all the years of its existence. Modernized to a considerable extent, the atmosphere of the store is still reminiscent of an older and slower, not to say more homelike and pleasant age, and the present proprietor, Mr. Alley, a native of West Tisbury will continue to operate the business along the traditional line of its history and with no drastic changes in mind.
 
To the other folk of the Vineyard the store will continue to be known as “Sanderson’s,” and it will no doubt be please to Mr. Alley to have all possible characteristics of the landmark preserved.
 
Longside the stove in Sanderson’s,
The men who gather there today,
Will talk of fleeting time and change,
Adoption of the modern way.
 
For Sanderson has long since gone,
With Dana Hancock and Uluss’,
Along with others of the past, Such figures as old-timers miss.
 
No more the halters and the whips,
The milk pails and the lanterns swing,
From blackened timbers overhead,
Or small boys, dangling cowbells ring.
 
The coffee mill they used to turn,
The steel traps and the bars of lead,
For muzzle-loading shotgun loads,
Are gone, or stored in the outer shed.
 
But there the shelves stand, painted new,
With scars of use that clearly show.
There are the hooks, forged by the smith,
Where boots and pails hung long ago.
 
These are the self-same planks which jarred,
When stamped the feet of men of old,
In hot debate around the stove,
Through old-time winters, long and cold.
 
And here the narrow lanes through which
They looked to mark the swinging vane
That meant a good flight at the pond,
A freeze-up or a fall of rain.
 
The loamy side-walk by the porch,
By feet of generations tramped,
The bases of the hitching posts,
Where rows of waiting horses stamped.
 
All these are here, as once they were,
When grandsires of these present men
Were young and strong, who came and went
To “Sanderson’s” and back again.
 
And thus it seems, though changed the day,
Though paint and fixtures may replace
The smoky walls and hanging gear,
As beard conceals a friendly face - 
 
Yet underneath the features lie,
The same old kindly face we know.
So must, unchanged, be “Sanderson’s,”
The same old store of long ago.