(2010)
Benjamin Huldah Dyer (1833-1907).
B. H. Dyer & Company, a hardware, houseware and paint store and one of the last surviving old-line businesses, expired three years shy of the 21st century. “Gone are the long, cool aisles where a little of this and a box of that provided almost anything you might need in the way of hardware,” Sue Harrison wrote in a 1997 eulogy in The Banner. Benjamin Huldah Dyer was born in Truro, got into the painting business at the age of 17 and in 1866 moved to Provincetown, where he set up shop, The Banner said. Then he bought a second building and expanded into hardware. He lived at 7 Winthrop Street until his death in 1907. Dyer was succeeded in the business by George F. Miller, whom he had taken on as a clerk. He was succeeded in turn by George F. Miller Jr. His daughter, Mary Henrique (she had married Philip Henrique), returned to Provincetown from Boston in 1978 to run the store. “There is always a time to end things,” she said in 1997.
¶ Last updated on 17 June 2017.