Congratulations to Horton's Books & Gifts, Carrollton, Ga., which celebrates its 125th anniversary this month and through the summer, the Times-Georgian wrote. Anniversary events include the second annual Where's Waldo 5K and Fun Run on June 25; a buy local event on July 1; and a birthday party for store cat Poe on July 16.
Horton's, Georgia's oldest bookstore--which has had just five owners--was founded in 1891 by N.A. Horton, a schoolteacher who also worked at a furniture-making company that built caskets, leading him to start a side business as a funeral director. He then also became a bookseller, supplying school books to local students. Over the years, the store expanded its book offerings, and has carried a variety of sidelines, including "cameras, office supplies, jewelry, men's wear at one point," owner Dorothy Pittman told the newspaper. "You had to sell anything that would sell. The whole idea is you sold what sold."
Pittman, a former librarian, bought Horton's in 1997. The Times-Georgian called her "as much a Carrollton institution as was her predecessor, N.A. Horton. As one of the go-to people on local history, she has turned her librarian's mind to also researching the history of her store. Her office in the back of the shop is stacked with boxes full of files and clippings that she has collected over the years."
That history includes a lot of bookstore cats--and a ghost. The ghost is Mary Malinda, the first wife of founder N.A. Horton, who died in childbirth years before the store opened. A reader, book lover and the first female graduate of Bowdoin College, she apparently gravitated toward the store, where, among other things, she tried to help children learn, in part by "whispering the correct words in his/her ear," as she writes on the store's website.
