Roscoe’s Jewelry is one of the oldest continuous businesses in Denison – established in 1921 by Earle Roscoe. But the lineage of the jewelry store goes back a couple decades before that.

In 1905, J.V. Barborka moved to Denison and opened a watch repair business on the north side of Broadway, about where The Cottage is today. He later purchased the stock of jewelry from Dr. L.M. Coon’s Main Street Jewelry Store. Barborka had learned the watch repair business from his father, who was a builder of clocks, including the clock that stands in uptown Denison. In 1918 Barborka’s jewelry store and the clock moved to the south side of Broadway (where the clock is today).

Earle Roscoe and his wife, Florence, and their six-year-old daughter, June, moved to Denison from Omaha in 1920. Earle was employed at Barborka’s and within a year was making plans to purchase the jewelry store over a number of years.

June and her husband, George Bagnall, who were married on June 2, 1934, became involved in the business and took it over when Earle passed away in 1962.

A look into the online archives of the Denison Bulletin and Denison Review did not reveal an exact month and day for the establishment of Barborka Jewelry or for Roscoe’s Jewelry, but the 35th anniversary for the current owners, Jim and Suzi Barnes, is coming up on March 1 this year.

“We actually bought it in February (1989), but June (Bagnall) wanted to operate it through Valentine’s Day because she had already bought the Valentine’s Day merchandise,” said Jim.

The purchase of Roscoe’s by Jim and Suzi is an example of recognizing opportunities when other paths have closed.

Jim grew up working in his father’s business, Olson Sporting Goods in Sioux City, and his mother’s business, the Knit Nook. As a junior high school student, he would ride the bus to downtown Sioux City to help at the sporting goods store after school, sometimes going to the warehouse or helping with deliveries of sporting goods items to schools. When he turned 16, his father decided he could deliver sporting goods to schools in Sioux City by himself.

After studying business courses at Morningside, Jim decided to stay in the family business, which resulted in a life on the road, calling on schools to sell and deliver sporting goods.

“I started traveling for my dad in 1960 and traveled for the next 28 years,” said Jim.

For part of the 28 years, Jim was traveling for himself. He purchased his father’s and mother’s businesses in 1971 and sold them in 1983.

Just before he sold the businesses, Jim struck a deal to go on the road with Reynolds Yarn Company.

“I was bored and went to a yarn show in Lincoln one day with my staff,” Jim explained. “I was wandering around the show and somebody said ‘so and so is hiring.’”

Jim spoke with Sandy Reynolds with Reynolds Yarn Company and agreed to travel in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota for the company. Reynolds Yarn Company was later bought by Johnson Creative Arts and Jim became an assistant sales manager and traveled seven states to markets as far away as Dallas, San Diego, New Jersey, New York City, Chicago and Kansas City.

Then health problems arose.

“I was on the road too many days and too many long days and developed a blood clot in my leg from so much driving and sitting,” Jim explained.

At the time, Jim was living at the family home in Spirit Lake. He returned from a trip on a Friday at the start of an extended Fourth of July weekend and started mowing the lawn, feeling worse all the time. The next day, his leg was swollen, and Suzi, then his fiancée, took him to the emergency room. That eventually led to a trip to a hospital in Sioux Falls for an operation.

After the operation, the surgeon told Suzi that Jim had to find another job because he was sitting in the car too long. That was in July of 1988 (they were married in October that year).

On a trip to Denison, Jim and Suzi went to Roscoe’s Jewelry to shop for a wedding ring. Through a conversation with an employee, Ed Drilling, Jim learned that June Bagnall was interested in selling the business. On the way home, Suzi asked what the conservation had been about.

“Evidently, June wants to sell the store,” Jim replied.

“When we get home, you call her and tell her we would be interested,” Suzi responded.

That was in August, and since June had purchased inventory for Christmas, Jim had to wait. He went back out on the road, but the trips were shorter this time.

Jim had plenty of business experience but not the jewelry store knowledge.

“It was a big learning curve,” he said. “June stayed with me for a full year and gave me the gemology tests. She was a certified gemologist.

“Along with that, I learned a little bit from Ed (Drilling) but June had also helped another couple start a jewelry repair business in Council Bluffs,” Jim continued. “They helped me more than anybody with repair work.”

Jim spent every Tuesday in their shop.

The jewelry store has seen its changes through the years. A number of products they had been carrying were discontinued for one reason or another. An advertisement in 1948 promoted Smith-Corona typewriters. Another advertisement the same year promoted photo equipment.

“We used to do a nice business in China, crystal and silver services – tea pots and coffee makers – but that’s gone by the wayside because none of that can go into a dishwasher,” said Jim. “With silver, they had not come up with the treatments like they have now – sterling silver rings treated with Rhodium, so they don’t tarnish as quickly.

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“It seems like the younger generations are more interested in stainless silverware, and I can’t blame them,” he added.

Jim said he still sells a lot of baby silverware because he can do the engraving.

“The bridal registry for a jewelry store is not that big unless you carry a lot of giftware, and we were not really a giftware store as much as we were a jewelry and watch business,” he explained.

The volume in watches is another change Jim has seen.

“There aren’t as many people wearing watches. I’ve never been without a watch, and a lot of guys still like them. But people have their phones today,” he said.

For Jim, a big change in selling jewelry was no longer being on the road.

“One thing it allowed me to do is to have lunch at home,” Jim said. “All those years on the road, I either ate at the schools I called on or at restaurants. In the last years I was traveling for the art company, I was on the road Monday through Friday, eating at restaurants each day. I got pretty familiar with the restaurants where I stopped.

“And it was a big change for me to be home every night,” he added.

For years Roscoe’s Jewelry was advertised as “At The Sign Of the Clock,” referring to the 1908-era street clock.

Sometime in the 1970s, when the city was doing some reconstruction on the sidewalks, the clock was taken down, Jim recalled.

The clock was stored in the basement of Hallett’s Bootery for 30 years.

When the city embarked on a streetscape project in the early 2000s, Jim objected to having a tree in a planter right in front of the door to his business but instead proposed having the Barborka clock reinstalled. That was done in 2004. Barry Mundt was in charge of dismantling the clock and having it refurbished. Petersen’s Manufacturing and Thermal Fab (now Sullivan Supply) put in donated labor to refurbish the clock and make it operational.

Unfortunately, the clock is not operational today because the power supply was turned off.

In 2007 Jim and Suzi Barnes moved Roscoe’s to the lower level of the Hartwig House at the corner of North Main Street and 4th Avenue North. Suzi, the granddaughter of Henry Hartwig, is the fourth generation of Hartwigs to live in the house.

“The lower level has about the same amount of space as was in the store downtown,” said Jim.

He added, “We’re not on Broadway, but we’re here.”

The lower level had been his father-in-law’s man cave.

Jim and Suzi decided not to purchase Roscoe’s Jewelry building on the advice of their banker.

“After Mrs. Bagnell passed away, her sister-in-law’s heirs hadn’t had anything to do with Denison and wanted to just sell the building,” Jim explained.

Downtown Denison was changing at the time and the banker advised against buying the building because of the concern of getting the investment back out.

Jim has a respect for being an owner of a business that’s over a century old.

“I’ve tried to carry on the same traditions - be friendly to the
customer, give them the best service I can and carry a nice line of products like the store has always had,” said Barnes. “Service is the business. It’s the whole thing.”

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