The Country Ham Store!

The building the ham store was located in was originally The Exchange Bank. The Allen Family operated the bank until it merged with The Citizens Bank, which at the time was located across the street. Today The Citizens Bank is on located on this spot. 

Murphy’s Country Ham Store, Sharpsburg. The above picture is part of a larger display on the family business that has been donated to the Bath County History Museum by Mike Murphy. This is where the Citizen's Bank is now located. 

Brent Frizzle shared this nostalgic snap shot  of the Murphy's rolling store!! Circa 1951 Sharpsburg Ky

Remembering “The Country Ham Man”

He became a successful small-town businessman at a young age and was known worldwide for his culinary skills to yield a delicious mealtime favorite.

To this day the late Elgin Murphy is still remembered as “the country ham man”.

Many of the older, local citizens fondly recall Elgin’s Country Ham Store that was located in a large two-story brick building that fronted Main Street. (The current Citizen’s Bank of Sharpsburg is located on the property today)

Sometime around 1925, Buford Murphy, his wife Virgie, daughter Irene and son Elgin moved to Sharpsburg from Ezel, Ky. and opened Murphy’s Grocery on main street.

Buford passed away in December of 1932 from complications of Influenza, but his wife and children continued to operate the store.

In later years Irene and her husband Richard Best took over the family business.

By the time he was early twenties, Elgin had learned firsthand how to cure hams and started a business that became known as the Country Ham Store.

Elgin’s ham store was located in a large brick building built sometime after the Civil War era and housed the towns first banking business.

The Exchange Bank of Sharpsburg was organized around 1860 and was owned by Sanford Allen.

In 1926 the Allen’s retired from the banking business and the assets of the Exchange bank were acquired by the Citizen’s Bank of Sharpsburg and by 1904 the bank had moved to a new building across the street.

A few longtime residents recalled the Sharpsburg Telephone Exchange Company was housed in the old bank building before Elgin opened his store.

Henry Hornsby, a Lexington newspaper correspondent, told the story of how Elgin Murphy became known as “the country ham man” in an article he wrote in the spring of 1951.

The story goes that Elgin built up a trade that provided hams to customers all over the United States and filled orders that were shipped to customers in England and Germany.

It was said that the Golden Horseshoe in Lexington ordered around 15,000 pounds of ham a year and was Elgin’s biggest customers and he was called on regularly to supply cooked hams for special parties.

He preferred green hickory wood to smoke his hams and would have about 150 curing at one time.

Elgin also operated a store on wheels in which Cleve Fisher drove door to door to the rural areas of Bath, Nicholas, Montgomery and Bourbon counties.

The store on wheels was stocked with all kinds of food and household items offered for purchase to around 500 farmers.
While some paid for their goods with cash, others traded produce, eggs, hams and turtles and catfish for food or farm supplies.

Through the years, Elgin became an expert in the country ham business and to this day is still remembered as “the country ham man”.

For more information the Murphy family business, be sure to stop by for a visit at the Bath County History Museum on the second floor of the old courthouse in Owingsville.

The museum is open on Saturdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.