The Hartford General Store Robbery
The Hartford General Store today. It is no longer open for business.
Hartford, ON is small hamlet located at the northeast corner of Norfolk County. Like many small communities, it was built up around a church and a general store. The Hartford General Store was built in 1849 by T. Haskett. The original store burned in 1912 but a new store was built and reopened in 1913. It changed hands several times. The last to own the Hartford store was Mr. & Mrs. Nelson and before them, Mrs. Nelson’s mother Mrs. Leng. This story is about her.
The year was 1975 and the headline in the local newspaper read: Grandmother Routs Two Armed Robbers
The Simcoe Reformer reported, “A 75 year old grandmother didn’t like it very much when two armed robbers pointed a 12-gauge shotgun at her grandson Friday night. I yelled something like no, no, no, and then he pointed the gun at me, said Mrs. George Leng, owner and operator of the Hartford General Store. I grabbed the gun and we started to tussle a bit.”
Mrs. Leng said the two men entered the store at 7:30 p.m. She was out behind the store in her kitchen and saw the two strange men come in. Her grandson Peter, who was 15 at the time, was in the store filling the soft drink cooler. The men came in saying, this is no joke, give us your money. Mrs. Leng responded, what did you say and reported that they repeated themselves only louder this time. Her grandson told her to give the men what they wanted.
The taller of the two men pointed the 12-gauge at Peter and Mrs. Leng said she didn’t like that very much. She yelled at the robber and he then pointed the gun at her. She grabbed it, which in hindsight she said “I guess I shouldn’t have done that”, and they tussled a bit.
She said the other man without the gun started to get mad and said they weren’t joking. So she pulled out her revolver from under the store counter and said, “this is no joke either”.
The two men backed out of the store while she remained behind the counter. “Yes I was scared, she said, but I think I was more mad than anything.” The storekeeper has been held up four times before and Mrs. Leng is proud of the fact they’ve never had a penny taken.
When we bought the Hartford General Store counter in the early 2000s, the revolver was long gone but its holster was still in place. A piece of history with a great gun toting granny story attached to it. The holster will remain it its rightful place as long as we own the counter.
Mrs. Leng’s holster under the Hartford store counter.