Casimir Drugstore

Jean Pierre Casimir was one of many newcomers from abroad on Calvert's Main Street. The Frenchmen Bertrand and Jacques Adoue were merchants and bankers; their building, with its steel vault, still stood in 1977. The Sanger Brothers opened a store in 1868, before the first train, and about sixteen Jewish-owned businesses were downtown by 1870. Rudolph Oscar, who left Poland in 1859, built a four-story hotel in the late 1880s. After the 1873 yellow fever, Jewish families formed a benevolent society and bought cemetery land; its first four burials were fever victims.

What the plaque says

Casimir Drugstore Sometime after 1869, Jean Pierre Casimir (d. 1929), native of Toulouse, France, built this structure. His family operated drugstore here until 1949. A patio in the rear connected drugstore to the Palace Opera House, also owned and operated by the Casimir family. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calvert — steps away
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 20 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.

More markers nearby

• Town of Calvert — steps away
• Home Area of Chinese Farmers — steps away
• Sneed Memorial Methodist Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Calvert — 0.3 mi