For half a century, shoe maker called South Hannibal home

The Essig & Troesken shoe store was located at 225 Broadway circa 1889. Photo shared by Carolyn Whaley Vosburg, Houston, Texas, via Ancestry.com. Reprinted with permission.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

Popeye’s (also known as South Side) Tavern, located on the southwest corner of South Main and Jefferson streets, Hannibal, quenched this neighborhood’s collective thirst from circa 1955, when William L. Truitt first opened the bar, until the mid 1970s, when Donald and Alleen Salter locked the door behind them as the bar closed.

While many stories generated from this building during the tavern’s two-decade duration, there is more to this post-Civil War building’s legacy than whiskey and beer.

The bricks of this two-story double building, made of local accessed clay, sand and water, were likely kilned right there in this neighborhood, by craftsmen who lived nearby and shopped in the associated businesses.

The stained and worn floorboards of this now dismantled brick building were most likely crafted from native timbers floated from the northlands to the Hannibal’s shoreline during the years when Hannibal was a rail transportation hub to the West.

If these bricks and floorboards were still here to tell their story, they might describe how this building, situated at a key business intersection, evolved along with Hannibal’s business climate, serving customers during war years, prohibition, financial depression and recovery, emancipation and even the suffrage movement.

Those bricks and floorboards, culled by the sweat of man’s brow, might have told the tale of an an early German inhabitant, an immigrant who brought his time-honored cordwainer skills to the United States in 1860, and in turn settled in South Hannibal circa 1866, following the end of the war between the states.

Peter Essig (circa 1840-1916), worked and lived in this building for most of the half century spent as a Hannibal resident. He was Bavarian by birth, a Lutheran by faith, and a shoemaker by vocation. As a “cordwinder” or shoe maker, he adapted his time-honed skills, evolving through the years from hand-crafted custom boots fit specifically to the wearer, to mass-produced footware sold wholesale to other downtown shops.

Identified as a boot and shoe manufacturer, Peter Essig was living and working in Hannibal’s Fourth Ward (South Side) in July 1870. Married to Almira M. Holtzman Essig, (1847-1896) circa 1866,by 1870 they were the parents of two young children, including Madalena (Maggie) E. Essig (1868-1922).

They would go on to have seven children, in total. 

Key Hannibal trade

In 1871, the Hannibal city directory advertised a total of 10 boot and shoe manufacturers; two, including Essig and T. Flanigan, doing business south of Bear Creek.

The building where Peter Essig both worked and resided consisted of two storefronts, divided by a brick wall on the first floor, and a combined living unit upstairs. The legal address of this property is: all of lots 7 and 8, Block 110, Hannibal.

Following clues in the Hannibal city directories available on the Hannibal Free Public Library’s website, it appears that Essig typically operated his shoe business in the storefront to the south, while renting out retail space in the storefront to the north, each facing Main - or Third Street.

In 1873, John Zimmerman operated a grocery store on one side of the first floor, and Essig, manufacturer of “fine and course boots,” occupied the other half.

A sampling of the other businesses which were have been located at 601-603 S. Main (also known as 200-202 3rd) include:

1885

200 3rd, SS Chris Gettemann, grocer, (or Jettemann)

202 3rd, SS Residence same: Peter Essig, boots and shoes 

1901

200 3rd SS, Marcellus S. Smith, grocer

202 3rd, SS, Essig residence

1907

200 3rd, SS, W.W. Ellingsworth, barber

202 3rd, SS,  Byron A. Loomis, notions 

1925

Bruce and Maude Wright, grocery, 601 S. Main

Frank Essig, shoe repair, 603 S. Main.

1937

Moody’s Market, meat, 601 S. Main, Russell F. Harlow.

Railway Cafe, 603 S. Main, Oliver B. Purdy

Across the creek

While the Essig name was synonymous with South Hannibal for many years, Peter Essig did not exclusively do business on the south side of Bear Creek.

In 1892, Essig was in business with G. Richard Holtzman, in a boot and shoe store at 223 Broadway. At that time, Essig also operated his boot and shoe store at 202 Third, South Hannibal.

In May 1889, he and his brother-in-law, Louis Troesken, were in the shoe business together at 225 Broadway, doing business as Home Shoe Store, Essig and Troesken. (The building is still standing in 2026.)

Louis Troesken’s wife, Josephine Holtzman Troesken, was sister to Peter Essig’s wife, Almira, who died in 1896. Josephine and Almira were daughters of Peter C. Holtzman, who, at the age of 50, in 1850, was a Hannibal carpenter.

Louis Troesken died in November 1902, at the age of 42. At the time of his death, he made his home at 315 Third, South Hannibal.

Death calls

Peter Essig died March 8, 1916. Survivors included four children: Frank P. Essig, and Misses Lena and Carrie Essig and Mrs. Anna Bindel, all of Hannibal. He bequeathed the building at 601-603 S. Main to Lena, Carrie and Frank Essig.

Note: The Rev. Andrew Kolb, Presbyterian minister, performed the wedding ceremony for Peter and Almira Essig circa 1866. Rev. Kolb, who lived on Ninth Street, Hannibal’s South Side, died in January 1907 and was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

This photo, from the Hannibal Courier-Post archives, was likely taken during the 1970s. The advertising mural on the side of the building in the photo’s center clearly identifies it as Popeye’s Tavern. This is the building, on the southwest corner of South Main and Jefferson, that Peter Essig owned, lived and worked in for a half century. Steve Chou collection.

Essig advertisement: Peter Essig advertised his boots and shoes business in The Morning News, Sunday morning, May 3, 1885, Frank B. McElroy, editor.  Newspapers.com 

Dec. 18, 1910, Hannibal Morning Journal newspaper, Hannibal, Mo. Newspapers.com

Mary Lou Montgomery, Suburban Newspapers of America Editor of the Year, Dailies, 2010, retired as editor of the Hannibal, Mo., Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on amazon.com by this author include: “The Notorious Madam Shaw,” “Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’” “Oakwood: West of Hannibal,” “St. Mary’s Avenue District,” and “Live, on stage in Hannibal 1879: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore.’” Montgomery can be reached at montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com