This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published in the Valley News on Aug. 26, 2025.
NORWICH — Last week, Nancy LeSourd was gardening at her home on Beaver Meadow Road in Norwich Village when a yellow jacket stung her. LeSourd, 81, found herself going into anaphylactic shock. Avoiding calling an ambulance in fear of the bill, she tried neighbors and the community nurse, but no one picked-up.
“I staggered up to Dan & Whit’s,” she said. “I just wanted to be around people. I walked it off for an-hour-and-a-half at Dan & Whit’s.”
On Friday evening, LeSourd, along with a few hundred others, gathered at the Norwich Historical Society for the opening of the exhibit “Dan & Whit’s at 70: Photographs & Memories.” Later, community members made their way up to the general store to celebrate its 70th anniversary. As LeSourd’s experience suggests, all those years of history add up to something more than an ordinary relationship between a store and its customers.
“Dan & Whit’s is family,” Sarah Rooker, the director of the historical society said at the event. “It provides a feeling of belonging.”
Previously Merrill’s, the building Dan & Whit’s is in has been a general store for close to 200 years, Rooker said.
Neighbors Dan Fraser and Whit Hicks began operating the store together in 1955. Hicks retired in 1972 and Fraser purchased the property. The store has been in the Fraser family ever since and about 20 Frasers from four different generations have worked there over the decades.
“My whole family worked there. My mom, dad, siblings, their kids, my kids,” Jane Britton, Dan Fraser’s daughter said.
Britton worked at the store on and off when she was a teenager and then full-time when she moved back to Norwich in 1988. She’s since retired but still lives in Norwich and goes to the store a couple times a week, she said.
“Of course there was drama, and fun, and no secrets,” she said about working with family. “If one of my kids cut a class their teacher would come in and say ‘by the way your son wasn’t in my class today.’ The kids realized they couldn’t get away with anything pretty quickly.”
Britton’s brother George Fraser is currently one of the owners of the store, along with his son Matt Fraser.
“I feel very fortunate that the community has supported the store for so long,” George Fraser, 83, said.
George Fraser ran the store with his brother Howard “Jack” Fraser for decades. (Jack Fraser died in 2019.) He recalled a time when a young employee said he couldn’t make it to work due to snowy weather.
“I said I’ll be there in 10 minutes to pick you up,” George Fraser said. “He was like ‘OK, OK I’m coming in’.”
Matt Fraser is the only one in the family who now works at the store full-time.
“It’s not so much me carrying on, but me doing what I’ve always done,” Matt Fraser said.
Matt Fraser, who’s now in his 50s, started working at the store part-time when he was “old enough,” he said. Fraser helps with grocery, dairy and his favorite: firewood. His least favorite part of working at the store is “dealing with people,” he said. To commemorate the store’s long history, the historical society curated an exhibit with both photos, information and quotes about the store’s past and the present.
As he walked through the historical society, Lebanon resident Daniel Moore took in a room of photographs of the store in its current state taken by Norwich resident Kay McCabe. Moore, who grew up in Norwich, started working at Dan & Whit’s in 1972 when he was 15. “All the people were so good,” he said.
Over the six-or-so years he worked there, Moore remembers staying open until noon on Christmas and Thanksgiving so residents could make last minute purchases.
At the invitation of the historical society, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, a longtime Upper Valley resident, gave a speech at the event. Welch spoke about stopping in at Dan & Whit’s when he worked at a law firm in the area and then later while on the campaign trail.
“When I first started in politics, I had to come to general stores to try to meet folks, and you and Jack were there, and you had to kind of keep an eye on me, because I was a little bit liberal,” Welch said to George Fraser who sat in the front row of the crowd and chuckled.
“A lot of us are dismayed about what’s going on in the country, but all of us believe deep down, in our soul that what we can do, and what we should aspire to do is build a community, to build that community where we live,” Welch said. “…This gift that the Fraser family has given to the town of Norwich, to each of us, is so vital to the well being of our community.”
At 6 p.m., community members began making the short walk up Main Street to Dan & Whit’s for live music, raffles and free pizza and ice cream.
Approximately 40 current and former employees of all ages gathered in front of the store for a photo.
“The team is phenomenal,” Matt Fraser said. The store struggled to find employees during the coronavirus pandemic but community members volunteered their time to keep it open.
Now, though, “things have been clicking. Everything’s been working in our favor,” Matt Fraser said.
“Dan & Whit’s at 70: Photographs & Memories” is on view at the Norwich Historical Society and Community Center through Dec. 31.
