If 20 years ago someone told me that I would someday be living in New England in a seaside town and have my own shop selling decor and gifts for people that love the primitive and colonial style I would have told them they were crazy. My home was very "80's" and I lived near the cornfields of Illinois at the time.  I had never been to New England, although that was the only region of the lower 48 I hadn't been to.  Fast forward a few years when my husband and I bought an old farmhouse with a 5 stall horse barn on a few acres in a little town on the prairie and the transformation of my decor, and even my very way of thinking had begun.  I began going to flea markets, antique shops, and little shops much like the one I now own.  A few years later my husband and I had a few free plane tickets to use and I suggested we visit New England.  I wanted to go somewhere near the ocean, but to a part of the country I hadn't seen.  We spent 5 days in Newport, RI in the fall and I fell in love with the architecture, the scenery, the fall colors, the seaside vistas, etc... Our family vacation the following summer was going to be to take the kids to the Grand Canyon but I decided that we should take them to New England instead.  Life has a funny way of taking twists and turns when you least expect them.  We never took that vacation to New England because by spring time my husband was offered a job in Rhode Island.  We moved here that summer and have been living here in this vacation postcard setting ever since.  That was 1997, my children were 10 and 13 years old at the time.  

The first few years of living here I spent lots of time going to shops I found in the Country Register and exploring the wonderful local seaside towns. In 2002 my friend Beth from Illinois decided to open a shop in Bristol called "Old Glory II" and I managed it for her. She had two shops in Illinois at the time, one that I had worked at part time before moving to New England. In March 2005 my friend decided to close the Bristol shop since it was becoming too difficult to travel back and forth every few months. I had considered buying her shop but in the end decided it would be best just to close it down. The shop was very small, parking was extremely limited in downtown Bristol and I was looking forward to being able to go on business trips with my husband when my daughter left for college.

A few months after the shop closed I realized I missed visiting with customers, helping people select gifts and decor for their homes, and most everything else associated with running a small shop. My daughter said to me the day before we took her to college "Mom, promise me you won't sit on the couch with the cats all the time." Well...I certainly haven't. I thought about what she said, and the fact that not only was I becoming an empty nester with both my children now away at college, my husband decided to go back to school for a 2nd Master's degree in engineering. It was going to be a lonely, boring, five years. I decided to take a huge leap of faith and to use what I had learned from managing my friend's shop. It took a year from making that decision to actually open Bradford Mercantile in October 2006. After almost two years in our first location on Cutler Street, we had the opportunity to move the shop to a much more visible and historic location in September 2008.

If you find yourself in this area, whether on your way to Newport or any of the other wonderful places to visit in the East Bay, or you are headed out I-195 towards Cape Cod, stop in to see us. Meeting nice people from all over is one of the most interesting parts of being a shopkeeper.

Sincerely,

Terry Stone