130-year-old Easley general store to close its doors

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An Easley general store that has been rooted in the Dacusville community for 130 years, and known for their pies, announced on social media that it will close its doors.

Michael Hester built the Hester General Store in 1893 and set up the first floor as a general merchandise store and upstairs as a barber shop, according to its website.

The store was owned by the Hester family until 1983 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

In 2021, Hester General Store, at 1735 Hester Store Road, was purchased by Anderson native Katie Chaney to bring it back to its former glory as a general store, café and from-scratch bakery.

The store has served the local community by employing local talent, utilizing regional fruit and produce for selling, providing a family friendly shopping experience, and keeping community focused on community, a “key principle of the general store concept,” the website says.

“The time has come to close our physical doors,” Chaney said in a post on the store’s social media. “This is a heartbreaking decision, but it is the decision I have to make in order to take care of me and my family right now. It felt incongruent of me to sit on this information while also trying to host y’all for our one-year anniversary party, and so I’d like to re-engineer the party this weekend as a celebration of what was this year, a celebration of everything I’ve learned, a reflection on everything I messed up along the way, and just a time for hugs and community — what I wanted from the beginning. I don’t know how the next chapter will go, but I’m sure there will be pie … because I’m still Katie, right? We’re just going to get to know me and what I do differently in a context where hopefully my butterfly of an idea can flourish instead of wither.”

The store will be open until Dec. 24 during its winter hours of Thursday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.