Information Sheet

 

 

R            Whybark and Fisher store.

104                  Account books, 1868-1870.

                                    Three folders, photocopies.

 

 

 

These are financial records of a general store operated by Levi E. Whybark (ca. 1833-un­known) and Robert W. Fisher (1842-1908) at Marble Hill in Bollinger County, Missouri.  In­cluded are two ledgers, 1868-1870, and a daybook/journal, 1870.

 

Levi E. Whybark was a descendant of the Rev. Samuel Weiberg (later Whybark), a pioneer clergyman in southeastern Missouri.  Col. Matthias Bollinger, for whom the county was later named, had brought Weiberg to the area about 1804.

 

By 1860 Levi and Samuel W. Whybark were proprietors of a store at Buchanan in Bollinger County.  This business was interrupted by the Civil War, in which both men served as officers in the Union militia.  After the war Levi opened a store in Dallas, the original name for Marble Hill.

 

Robert Waldemar Fisher (sometimes rendered as Fischer) was a native of St. Louis, Mis­souri.  On 5 December 1867 he married Roena Whybark, and thereupon entered business with his brother-in-law, Levi.  Fisher also was a brother-in-law of Albert S. Siegel of St. Louis.

 

Included in the collection are two ledgers (1868-1869 and 1869-1870) and a day­book/journal (1870).  They record the usual transactions of a general mercantile store in a ru­ral county seat.  Although credit records noted that Whybark owned 54,000 acres of land in Butler County, Mis­souri, and that his “character and reputation” were good; and that Fisher was “honest,” “industri­ous,” and “prompt”; the firm was “played out & gone out of business” by De­cember 1870, “leav­ing considerable debts.”  It might have been suc­ceeded by W. B. Ford & Co., which likewise failed within the next year.

 

Whybark and Fisher were community leaders, the former being among the first trus­tees of Marble Hill (incorporated ca. 1868) and a charter member of the local Presbyterian church.  Fisher became the leader of the Marble Hill Cornet Band, which entertained the GAR reunion of 1886 in that town.  Fisher later “operated a combination sawmill, gristmill and carding machine on Hurri­cane Creek southeast of town.” (Bollinger County, 1851-1976; p. 196).

 

 

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