About the General Store
Take a journey back to yesteryear in our historic store. Visiting us is like taking a trip back in time to the simpler days when going to the General Store was depended upon for food, supplies, and neighborly news updates. Our General Stores carries our local handcrafted cakes and candies made with spirits. We also provide a large selection of locally made honey, sorghum, caramel and fudge sauces, and many other food products. We also carry Jack Daniel souvenirs, shoes, and gifts. Our store brand products are made right here in Lynchburg and are handmade using only the highest quality ingredients.
Life's a little easier than it was back then, but the pleasure of a trip to the General Store remains. Whether you relax and enjoy an old fashioned shopping experience as your footsteps echo on the wooden floors of our over 100 year old building, you will find a mix of extraordinary merchandise, old time candy, handmade tipsy cakes, hand crafted whiskey fudges (24 flavors), collectibles and gifts.
At The Sweet Southern Spirit General Store, it is our goal to give our visitors the experience and charm of an old time general store. It is very rewarding to us and gives us much pleasure to see our visitors reminisce on their childhood memories or to come and experience what their parents, grandparents and beyond did when coming to the old time general store.
While at The Sweet Southern Spirit General Store sip a glass bottle of Coca~Cola or one of our many other flavors of soda and enjoy sampling our fudges, cakes, salsas, hot sauces, bbq sauces, and other wonderful hand crafted food items.
History
Samuel and Elizabeth Daniel came to America from England in 1884 and settled in what is Moore County Tennessee today. Originally Moore County was a part of Coffee, Bedford, and Lincoln counties. The community they settled is now known as Raus. As a young couple, Samuel and Elizabeth struggled to raise their five children. They were share croppers and faithful church goers. Their granddaughter, Maude Daniel, was my great grandmother. Maude married my great grandfather Luther Banks and together they opened a General Store only 11 miles from where my store is located today. Luther was a very social and kind man. His mercantile was very successful, even during the depression. Luther was a bootlegger. He sold moonshine from underneath his General Mercantile until the day he died and was never arrested, but I’m sure he was often caught. I think when you supply the Sheriff and his deputies with “the recipe” you are likely to go unnoticed.
Luther died a young man. He accidently cut himself with a razorblade shaving and died of infection when he was only 37 years old. Their son, my grandfather, Rob Banks was only 16 years old when he took over as the man of the house. He had to quit school and go to work in the local Genesco Shoe Factory to make a living for his mother Maude and his four siblings. The story has a happy ending. Maude, Rob, and his siblings lived happy lives and lived to be in their 80’s and 90’s; his last sibling died in 2015.
Today, I operate an old General Store. Our vision was to offer a nostalgic shopping experience with the best customer service possible. We opened the General Store in November 2006. We don’t bootleg or sale any spirits directly; however, we make most of our candies, cakes, and other food products with spirits. We use a lot of Jack Daniels, Tennessee Moonshines, and other local spirits. The Original Tipsy Cake recipe used to make our tipsy cakes is a family recipe that has been handed down for generations now. Grandma Daniel loved tipsy cakes.
The Sweet Southern Spirit General Store is located in an historic 1912 bank building. The store building was built in 1912; the original bank vault is still in the store.
