Neilson's Department Store: (Pronounced "NEL sunz") The oldest department store in the South and the sixteenth oldest in the nation. Originally it was a log cabin trading post built north of the present square in 1839 by W.S. Neilson, it was the first business in Oxford. The present building was built by the son of W.S. Neilson in 1897. According to legend, Faulkner based the Emily Grierson of "A Rose for Emily" upon a Neilson daughter who married a Yankee.