This week our series on the 19th-century downtown Pekin business cards turns to an ephemeral drug store that operated briefly on Court Street during the 1870s: the firm of McKinstry & McSkimin.
This business card does not provide the address of McKinstry & McSkimin, but by magnifying the photograph we can see that the well-known Pekin attorney William Don Maus had his law office upstairs from this drug store. The 1870-71 Sellers & Bates City Directory of Pekin gives Maus’ address as (ss Court 3 d w Capitol (up stairs)” – the south side of Court St., three doors west of Capitol.
That would be in a building in the first 300 block of Court Street (no longer in existence), in the same general area where William B. Parker and his son William E. Parker had their law office.
This drug store left barely any record of its operations in the old Pekin city directories. The only trace of McKinstry & McSkimin that one can find in the city directories is on page 47 of the 1870-71 directory, which includes this listing:
“McKinstry T. H., pharmaceutist, bds sw cor Fourth and Elizabeth.”
That is clearly the “McKinstry” of McKinstry & McSkimin, which is never listed as a business in this or any other Pekin city directory. Furthermore, the surname “McSkimin” never appears in any Pekin city directory, so T. H. McKinstry’s partner J. McSkimin must not have lived and worked in Pekin very long.
Neither McKinstry nor McSkimin can be found in the 1876 directory, but in the 1887 directory, page 51, we find “McKinistry Thomas, carpenter, res. 208 Sabella” and “McKinstry J. Frank, teamster, A. S. Helmbold, res. 701 Summer.” It is unclear whether the carpenter Thomas “McKinistry” (sic) is the same person as T. H. McKinstry, pharmaceutist.
Be that as it may, McKinstry’s full name was Thomas Henry McKinstry. He was born 12 April 1844 near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, a son of John and Anna Mary (Work) McKinstry. The McKinstrys were a Scots-Irish family that came from Ireland in 1773 and settled in Pennsylvania. Thomas’ father John came to Tazewell County in 1855 and settled in the Delavan area.
His published obituary as well as census records show that McKinstry married Olive Hortense Ellis (1857-1945) on 23 Nov. 1875, but no children are recorded, so if there were any children they did not survive infancy or childhood. McKinstry died in Delavan on 12 May 1928 and was buried in Prairie Rest Cemetery there. His widow Hortense died 5 July 1945 in Pekin and was buried next to her late husband.
McKinstry’s obituary, which was was published in the Bloomington Pantagraph on 15 May 1928, provides a helpful biographical sketch of his life and career:
“DELAVAN, May 15. – Services for T. H. McKinstry, who died at his home in this city at 10:20 o’clock Sunday evening, were held from his home at 2:30 o’clock Tuesday afternoon. Rev. W. M. Clarke, pastor of the Presbyterian church, of which the deceased was a member, conducted the services at the home, and the Masons, of which order Mr. McKinstry was a member, had charge at Prairie Rest cemetery.
“Thomas Henry McKinstry was born near Mercersbur (sic), Pa., April 12, 1844. He was a son of John and Anna Mary (Work) McKinstry. He came to Delavan when 11 years old. He attended Lombard college, Galesburg, and later became a pharmacist, employed in Iowa City, Iowa. He returned to Delavan and for several years assisted his father in the milling business. Following this he was engaged at his profession in a drug store in Williamsburg, Kans.
“About 41 years ago he returned to this city and entered the employ of the late Dr. Archibald Maclay, for whom he worked for more than 30 years, and for a short time following for D. L. Row. Because of poor health he has not been actively engaged in work for several years. Nov. 23, 1875, Mr. McKinstry was married to Miss Hortense Ellis at Marion, Ohio, who survives. For a short while following his marriage he was employed in Bucyrus, Ohio.”
It is noteworthy that his obituary does not mention his business in Pekin during the 1870s. The fact that his Pekin drug store apparently didn’t last very long indicates that it was not successful. The obituary also indicates that McKinstry had returned to Delavan in or by 1887 – so perhaps the Pekin carpenter Thomas “McKinistry” in the 1887 Pekin directory is the same person as Thomas Henry McKinstry, druggist or pharmacist.
Though we are able to learn a great deal about McKinstry, unfortunately his erstwhile partner J. McSkimin remains a mystery. Census records show a McSkimin family in Peoria, but whether McKinstry’s partner came from that family is quite uncertain, for the Peoria McSkimins do not seem to have arrived in Central Illinois until the 1880s. Of that family we find James McSkimin (1845-1891), a child of Scots-Irish immigrants, buried in Springdale Cemetery in Peoria alongside his wife Maria Violetta (Whittemore) McSkimin (1846-1922), but we can’t be sure if he is our J. McSkimin.
There is also a Pekin family that has spelled its name variously as Meskimin or Meskimen, etc. (forms of the Scottish surname McSkimin), who were presumably distant cousins of McKinstry’s partner, but they arrived in Pekin much later than the 1870s. Hopefully future research will reveal the identity of the junior partner in this firm of McKinstry & McSkimin.
