The 1856 Country Store Is for Sale. Its Listing Says 1840.

Two benches sit on the front porch at 555 Main Street in Centerville, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. Inside, behind the counter, a black-and-white photograph shows Dick and Lorraine O'Connor smiling. Their daughters ring up penny candy in brown paper bags beneath it.

After 49 years in the O'Connor family, the 1856 Country Store is for sale. The listing went live Sept. 10, the Cape Cod Times reported, and Premier Commercial is taking offers on the land, building, business, equipment and improvements, including a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.

The year on the sign is 1856. The store's phone number ends in 1856 too. The sale listing, under "Year Built," says 1840.

So which is it? And what exactly is somebody buying when the building's own paperwork can't agree on its age?

The store tells its history one way. According to its own About page, the building went up in 1840 to hold cranberries after the harvest, became a shoe store under Samuel and Moses Hallet in 1842, and turned into a general store in 1856, which is where the name comes from. The Cape Cod Times repeated that account on Sept. 24, and the listing's 1840 matches it.

The official record tells it another way. The federal National Register nomination for the Centerville Historic District lists 555 Main Street as "Hallett's Store," Stick style, circa 1856, and counts it as a contributing resource in the district. A historic walking tour printed in the Town of Barnstable's FY2014 annual report also dates the Moses Hallet Store to about 1856 and says it began as a shoe store before the Hallets ran it as a general store, with a specialty in confections, ice cream and fruit. The same tour notes that the Moses Hallet House next door at 547 Main was moved there by Samuel from Craigville Beach Road.

Even the spelling splits. The store and the town write Hallet. The federal inventory writes Hallett.

We haven't found a document that reconciles the two timelines, and we aren't going to pretend one exists. It's possible both are describing something real. It's also possible one of them is a story that got told often enough to become the history. Either way, the store and the district agree on the part that matters for this week: this corner of Main Street has been a Hallet shop, a candy counter and a family business for a very long time.

Lorraine O'Connor wanted a country store long before she had one. She trained as a nurse, she told Patch in 2011, but fell for retail helping out in her grandfather's shop as a teenager. The Times reports that an earlier attempt with her husband, Dick, to buy the Centerville property fell through. The second one, in 1977, didn't.

Their daughters grew up with the store as part of the household. Joanne took over managing it when her parents retired, about 30 to 35 years ago; Janet joined her in 2004 and Katy in 2010. When the pandemic closed shops in the spring of 2020, the store delivered bags of candy to kids stuck at home, and Joanne told WHDH the store had been there "since before the Civil War." On either timeline, she's right.

Then came Sept. 10.

Joanne told the Cape Cod Times that the Realtor got more than 100 calls on the first day the store was listed. The broker, John Ciluzzi of Premier Commercial, told the paper the interest ranks among the strongest he's seen in 30 years of selling Cape commercial property, from buyers on the Cape and beyond. He lives locally and remembers bringing his own kids in for penny candy after the playground, which the listing places diagonally across the street.

More than 100 calls in a day, for a store whose porch furniture is sorted by political party.

What none of those callers could find online is a number. The listing shows no public asking price; it directs buyers to inquire. It does give 3,035 square feet, an open-plan store on the first floor and the apartment upstairs, sold as is.

The reasons for selling are the gentlest part of the story. Joanne recently became a grandmother and bought a home in Maine to be near her daughter's family. Janet wants more time with her two young granddaughters. Katy bought a home in Florida this year. Janet told the Times they all have good reasons to go; the sisters also said walking away isn't easy.

What comes next is genuinely open. The sisters say they long imagined adding coffee, pastries and beach sandwiches, but three people running a store while raising families can only take on so much. They told the Times they expect a new owner to bring new ideas and are curious to see them. Nothing in the listing requires a buyer to keep it a candy store, and no buyer, accepted offer or closing date has been announced.

For now, Joanne told the Times, it's "business as usual." Off-season hours are 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day, per the store's website, which makes it an easy detour on the way back from anywhere on Barnstable's south side. You'll find it at 555 Main Street, next to the South Congregational Church. When we wrote about the place in May, it was the refusal to change that caught our attention. That's still true this week.

The photograph behind the counter won't settle the 1840 question. It only records the one date nobody disputes, the year two people who wanted a country store finally got one.

Whenever someone new takes the keys, the building will have handled a handoff before. It went from the Hallets to whoever came after them, and eventually to the O'Connors. And whatever the records say, the sign has already picked its year.

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