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- Abilene Reporter-News, Texas, Tuesday, 3 July 1956
Bass Drug Sold
69-Year Abilene Name Disappears
For the first time in 69 years, there is no Bass Drug Co. in Abilene.
The last Bass Drug Co., owned by Henry K. Bass, at 425 Cypress St., has been sold. N.E. Peak purchased the business, effective July 1.
Prescription departments of Peak?s Prescription Pharmacy, 1052 N. 5th St., and the Cypress St. Store will be combined at the Bass store.
Bass, resident of 258 Victoria St., has been actively engaged in the drug business 38 years, after growing up in the business in which both his father and grandfather had been engaged.
The first Bass Drug was in the Bryan Building on the west side of the first block of Pine St., about midway of the block. Later the firm moved to the corner of N. 1st and Pine Sts. where the Alexander Building now is. It occupied that site for many years.
This Bass Drug was later dissolved and out of it in 1903 grew the McLemore-Bass Drug Co., formed by the late Henry J. Bass and the late A.P. McLemore.
Henry K. Bass was a member of the McLemore ? Bass partnership and has operated individually since 1945.
In 1926, he began management of a store on N. 1st St., which lasted five years. In 1931, that store was moved to 258 Cypress St., where it was operated as McLemore-Bass Drug Co. No. 3 until 1945.
Bass? father, Henry J. Bass died in 1945, and Henry K. Bass sold his interest in the partnership. Two months later he bought the Sloan store at the corner of N. 2dn and Pine Sts. In February of 1951, this store mas moved to 425 Cypress St., in a new building built for Bass by the Wagstaffs. The store has been located there since 1951.
Bass? grandfather, Dr. J. H. Bass, was a surgeon in the Civil War and an Abilene druggist.
Bass worked as a clerk in the store until 1926, when he became a partner.
Bass has two children, Henry K. Bass Jr., with the research department of Texas Co. at Port Arthur, and Mrs. W.G. Jenkins of Fort Benning, Ga.
A resident of Abilene since 1902, Bass said, ?There?s lots of demand for relief druggists in Abilene,? and inferred that he would attempt to fill the demand to some degree.
Peak, 52, lives at 2017 Lincoln Dr.
He owned the Wooten Hotel Pharmacy 10 years before opening Peak?s Pharmacy at 1052 N. 5gh St. in 1946. In the last 10 years Peak as bought College Hill Pharmacy prescriptions and Thornton?s files, combining them with the Bass Drug files.
Mr. and Mrs. Peak have one daughter, Mrs. Peggy MacQueen of Hobbs, N.M. He has been a registered pharmacist since 1921, and has 276,000 prescriptions on file.
Harold Garner, also a registered pharmacist, and Peak are on duty at the new Peak?s Prescription Pharmacy.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1897 - 1967 (70 years)