A Most Unusual Shop

Long before the road was paved, the intersection at Jackson Corners Road and Turkey Hill Road was pockmarked by horse hooves, rutted by carriage wheels. Now, hauling trucks hurtle through it. But for the past 250 years, Jackson Corners has been marked by one constant: The Colonial Stagecoach Inn and General Store.

The Old Gaddis Store. That’s how some Milan residents may remember it, with Myrtle Gaddis at the helm since the 1950s, then her daughter Faye, selling seasonal provisions, household items, and sodas after summer swims. In 1985, Robert and Melissa Rogoshewski bought the property, taking the reins of a then 230-year old general store, the oldest continuously operating general store in America. It’s no longer an inn, but the Rogoshewski’s home. They continued the general store tradition until 2003, selling their own harvest from the gardens, along with homemade jams.  

Now the Rogoshewskis have turned the general store into a more of an oddities store, Stagestop Antiques, moving their eclectic collection of objects to the next-door barn, switching their business from seasonal comestibles to vintage collectibles. “A most unusual shop,” reads the sign tacked to the side of the barn. 

On a recent afternoon, Robert pulled out a long, scaly object from behind his cluttered counter in the barn. It looked like a strip of knobbly bark. “This is what’s left of a colonial sword,” he said. He rummaged in the bottom of a glass display case. “Here is a 1787 Connecticut copper coin.” It was a deep brown, with only a vague impression of a wreathed figure on its face, made before the United States Mint existed. Both were found on the property, and clues to the colonial history of the unassuming intersection are still cropping up. “I’ve had friends come in with metal detectors,” said Rogoshewski, pausing for emphasis. “We’ve found spoons, we’ve found shoebuckles, there’s musket balls.” 

The Stagecoach Inn, the centerpiece of the property, was built in 1773 by Hugh Rea — a minuteman and head of the local militia —  on what was then called Nobletown Road. During the American Revolution, Continental soldiers passed through, including, according to Rogoshewski, Maj. Gen. Henry Knox, who stayed in the inn during his famous Noble Train of Artillery from Ticonderoga to Boston, while his men camped out in the fields. Apart from a respite for the weary troops of the Continental Army, the property has been used as a doctor’s office, a grange hall, a post office, a polling station, and the original Milan firehouse.

The adjacent barn was built in 1936. It’s borderline impossible to move through it without bumping into a mid-century radio or knocking your head on one of the dozens of chairs hanging from the ceiling. The old glass bottles clink as you walk across the groaning floorboards. Shelves lining the walls display pepper grinders, cigar boxes, lighters, typewriters, cameras, silverware, and much more. “You tell me what you’re looking for, I may have it,” chuckled Rogoshewski. 

Much of the Rogoshewski’s eclectic wares come from family — Melissa’s mother was an estate liquidator. “That there is the first home movie projector,” said Robert, pointing to a small trapezoidal box on top of a shelf. “That came from her.”

They also have items from their own antiquing, so that the store embodies the objects accumulated over a long life, presented with a charming haphazardness. But Rogoshewski, who is also a pastor at the Gallatin Community Church, is trying to downsize. “People will come and want to sell me stuff, but I’m trying to get rid of it — there’s no one to pass it on to,” he said. (The couple does not have children.) Once, he gave a portion of his wares, including letters from Dwight Eisenhower and General John J. Pershing, to an auctioneer to be sold off. He has yet to see the profits. 

Rogoshewski blew the dust off a pair of antique leather spats and inspected them. “You wore these on your shoes back then,” he said. Some people happen upon Stagestop Antiques, and are transported — the anachronisms on the shelves evoke pangs of young memory. Others come with a mission. “People are always coming in looking for milk bottles,” said Rogoshewski. “I had customers that —  when I got something they were looking for — I’d give them a call.”

“Jackson Corners Vigilant Association for the Detection of Horse Thieves,” read a stack of posters near the register, a print of an original 1872 poster that Rogoshewski has. Apparently, horse larceny was a big problem, explained Rogoshewski, who can spin transporting tales of colonial times from his extensive archaeological-like digging, literally and figuratively, through the property’s history. 

Rogoshewski locked up the barn and walked the few paces to the inn. “It’s about 80 percent original,” he said. “Pine floors, original clapboard, horsehair plaster walls, the old hand-blown wavy glass windows.” The old mounting block is still there, shin-high by the front door of the inn, close to Jackson Corners Road, which was used to help saddle up on a horse or to duck into a horse-drawn carriage. 

You won’t see any captured British artillery travelling down the road anymore, but you will see cars and trucks, which to the Rogoshewskis and their neighbors are going much too fast. “He was coming down the hill,” said Robert, recalling a crash he saw at the intersection. “He hit his brakes, came up, and hit this.” Rogoshewski pointed to the mounting block. “That chip right there is from him.”

A small chip in an unassuming slab of stone — maybe where Knox once stood and mounted his horse, well rested from a night at the inn, and headed for Boston.