The Gold that Guides
Between trends and traditions, Neilson’s has found a sweet spot somewhere in the middle
Published in Delta Magazine
By JOHN FINCHER BOBO
There’s a pretty girl on the square in Oxford. Ok.
She's wearing an expensive outfit and taking a selfie. Sure.
She’s being held hostage in a glass prison. Hold up.
She’s made entirely of plastic.
She is the display mannequin in the department store window of a definitive Oxford gem: Neilson’s Department Store. And yes, she is literally taking a selfie.
To many people Neilson’s is about as “Oxford” as it gets. Their doors opened in 1839, only 3 years after Lafayette County was established when Ole Miss was just a gleam in the colonel’s eye. Neilson’s carries the distinction of being the oldest store in the South, the 16th oldest in the nation, and is on a short list of remaining independent department stores still in existence today. While similar stores have faded into stories, Neilson’s is seeing their best decade of sales and in their spare time pulled off a $1 million interior renovation. This store spans over 3 centuries of American history, and looks good doin’ it.
In 1838, the days of ox-wagons and westward expansion, William Smith Neilson passed through Memphis, Tennessee, and settled in the old Chickasaw lands in North Mississippi, what you and I now call Oxford. His first store was a small log cabin on the north side of the Courthouse Square. Stocked to the brim with groceries, hardware, clothing, drugs, and even coffins — Neilson’s was basically amazon.com for the Davy Crocketts and the Daniel Boones.
During the Civil War, Neilson’s was burned to the ground along with the rest of the square by General A. J. “Whiskey Joe” Smith. It reopened in 1866, making it one of the few businesses to survive the war. Neilson’s eventually came to occupy much of the Eastern portion of the square, where it remains today. By this time J.E. Neilson, William Smith Neilson’s son, had taken over, divvied up the store into departments, and concentrated his inventory on clothing and such.
Over the years Neilson’s has been passed through the hands of only three families: the Neilsons, the Glenns, and now the Lewises. They’ve earned the nearby trust of their customers and the far-off attention of places like the U.S Department of the Interior. In 1980 that department placed Neilson’s on the National Register of Historic Places, an estimable spectrum including prestigious honorees like Monticello and the Washington Monument, as well as the unforgettable "Welcome to the Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. Neilson’s is a mix of those two sentiments, that of distinguished southern history and conspicuous charm.
But Neilson’s is more than just an old building or an echo of the South’s journey. It transcends all of that because it is neither anchored by stagnant traditions nor uprooted by effervescent trends. It is the organic crossroads between the two: “Where Trends Meet Tradition,” their motto proclaims. Like so many great southern things Neilson’s is a living breathing organism with a perceptible soul.
“One thing we’re not is old-fashioned,” says Will Lewis. Lewis is the current owner, commander-in-chief, and a veritable slice of that soul.
Lewis took over Neilson’s in 1964 and 3 years later quit practicing law to devote his full focus to the store.
If you ask Will Lewis about their sustained success he’ll tell you about the great leadership at the University, influx of retirees moving back to Oxford, and the increasing popularity of Ole Miss football. With each expansion of Vaught-Hemingway, home-game weekend sales BIM-BAM’d their way well beyond the Hotty Toddy holidays.
“Christmas used to be the big time. Now it’s football weekends,” says Lewis.
That all may very well be true. But I wonder if Neilson’s booming transition into the 21st century has less to do with Mr. Lewis’ examples and more to do with Mr. Lewis himself.
Lewis is a staunch memorializer of Civil War history. He is particularly interested in the soldiers, many of them Ole Miss students, who fought for the confederacy. He and a few others are responsible for handsome monuments at Gettysburg and Antietam honoring the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. In June of this year, there will be another monument commemorated in Richmond. Lewis talks about the University Greys, the Coahoma Invincibles, and the Prairie Riflemen of Okalona like (I hope) my grandmother talks about me.
But if you look at the top of Neilson’s you will see 2 flags waving in the wind: the American Flag and the Magnolia Flag. The Magnolia Flag, Mississippi’s first flag, has been used over the years as an alternative flag of sorts in light of the fluctuating controversy of our official state flag and what it represents. Of the few places in Oxford bold enough to wave the Magnolia Flag, Neilson’s is the highest profile.
Lewis is the reason that flag flies. In 2001 when the Mississippi Legislature proposed a referendum that brought the state flag to a popular vote, he hoisted the Magnolia Flag.
“We knew [the vote] would fail. But as far as my family was concerned, it did fly in the face of a good portion of the community,” Lewis says.
That was all the reason he needed. When the vote failed Neilson’s put the official Mississippi flag back up. It wasn't until this past summer that the Magnolia Flag went back up, in lockstep with the movement that culminated in the University removing the state flag from campus in October.
Lewis is a microcosm of Neilson’s motto. Between trends and traditions, he has found a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. Part magnolia flag bearer, part confederate memorializer. He also helped the American Legion with the completion and desegregation of names listed on the WWII memorial located on the Courthouse Square grounds. In our current world of polarized opinions and mutual exclusions, it’s hard not to notice somebody with the gall to have versatile convictions.
Neilson’s is like the godfather of retailers. Nobody lasts this long without being ruthlessly adaptable. They’ve survived the fires of a civil war and the chill of a depression. They’ve survived mail order catalogues of the 60s, big department stores of the 80s and the internet of today. Now the dust has settled and there is a glossy plastic mannequin taking a selfie in the display window, gold iPhone nested in her hands. When Lewis saw that mannequin for the first time, he knew he had to buy one for the store. Neilson’s knows how to adapt.
Soon after the Civil War began, the aforementioned William Smith Neilson made the astute decision to convert most of his money into gold and bury that gold in the garden. After General “Whiskey Joe” burned the square to ashes, those gold bricks allowed Neilson’s to resume operations in 1866, just a year after the war’s end.
Flash forward some 149 years later, during football season of 2015. Will Lewis walks out of the front door of his house, only a stone’s throw from the square. He notices something shimmer in the grass. Lying there in his front lawn is a gold brick, well, a gold iPhone to be specific, probably belonging to some girl (or fancy boy) who dropped it on their way home from a Friday night on the town. Now that phone awaits to be claimed, while resting in the cold shiny hands of a display mannequin on the square.
And so marks the second time in history a brick of gold has ushered Neilson's into a new era. After 176 years, the South’s oldest store has maintained traditions, adopted some trends, and still managed to keep some gold in the garden.