Gap Mills, WVa. (WVDN) – Utilizing a century-old house known to longtime residents as “the old post office”, Brian and Tammy Berry have opened Sweet Springs Antiques where Tammy’s grandparents lived and her grandmother served as postmistress for forty years, beginning in the mid-1930’s. From as early as 1905, the original storefront housed Keenan Bros. General Store, owned and operated by Charlie and Pat Keenan. The story handed down through history is that one night in the 1920’s an oil lamp overturned in an upstairs bedroom, and the building burned to the ground. The brothers rebuilt the building as it stands now. In 1938, Tammy’s grandparents, Delwin and Ruby Baker, bought the property. Ruby moved the post office into the storefront, and they opened a country store that served the community for decades.
Tammy said, “My dad, Gordon Baker, was actually born in this house. He will be 84-years-old in July, and has many wonderful memories of the house and his childhood. Brian and I bought the property in December, 2022, and have spent seventeen months renovating the house and store. We still have a good bit of work to complete in the house, but our hard work has made the opening of the antique store possible now.” Gordon still lives just down the road, and continues to operate the farm started by his dad over 70 years ago.
Brian is the real salesman in the family. “I always say I have been in sales since I was eight years old when I traded and sold my army men, marbles, and baseball cards on wood shelves stretched across trash cans in the alley behind my family’s Baltimore County rowhouse.” Through the years Brian has sold greeting cards, newspaper and magazine subscriptions, cars, real estate, insurance and furniture. “Adding antiques to that long list seems natural,” he said. In 1984, Brian moved his insurance business from Baltimore to Waynesboro, VA, and has lived most of the years since then throughout Virginia.
For Tammy, it is a homecoming. “I grew up in Sweet Springs, and graduated from Union High School in 1980 (‘Go Red Devils’),” said Tammy. After college at Marshall University and Concord College, she moved to Covington, VA and began her teaching career in Bath County, and a couple years later in Alleghany County where she was the high school librarian for twenty-three years.
In 2006, Brian and Tammy were married. They have seven children and seven grandchildren. “After our youngest daughter graduated from high school in 2012, we moved to Virginia Beach before making our way back to West Virginia, spending several years along the way in Richmond and Waynesboro,” Tammy added. After visiting antique malls in several states over the years, they fell in love with all things vintage. “We decided that most of the things in the antique malls were things we could personally remember from our own childhoods, so opening an antique store ourselves sounded perfect for these two antiques.”
Sweet Springs Antiques opened on May 30 and has seen tremendous support from local residents as well as travelers from as far away as Maryland and New York. It is located at 19517 Sweet Springs Valley Rd., Gap Mills, across from Sweet Springs Resort. The store will be open every Thursday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Brian and Tammy invite everyone to stop by to browse their variety of saved, restored, and repurposed treasures. Brian commented, “We really look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones with this business. Hopefully, each customer that comes into our shop will find something to remind them of their childhood, or of their family heritage.”
