Whether it’s catching lightning bugs on warm summer nights, smelling the sweet honeysuckle flower, or hearing your favorite college football team’s fight song, something about the South will always make you feel at home. 

The Old Try is about home, about connecting people to a place—a place you have lived your entire life or a place you go to in your dreams. Whether you’re from the South or not, everyone has a connection to a place and a story to tell. Micah Whitson tells his story through rich traditions, 100-percent cotton paper, and an old letterpress printer. 

There’s also something magical about the way Southerners can tell a story. After leaving the South and moving to Boston, Micah found himself becoming a little nostalgic for home, much like that famous Southerner and author William Faulkner once had. In April 2011, tornadoes ripped through Whitson’s home state of Alabama, leaving him disconnected and isolated. He felt a pull to do something that reconnected him with his home in the South. 

A few months later, unable to shake the feeling, Whitson decided to start an online business, one especially suited for the South. He shared the idea with his wife, Marianna, who was enthusiastic. Says Micah, “She was like, ‘Alright man, go for it,’” and with that approval, Old Try was born. 

In preparation for the launch, Micah contacted popular online bloggers he regularly followed, telling them about his new business and the story that ignited it. Blogger Grace Bonney responded quickly, and Old Try landed on the homepage of Design Sponge. With more than 75,000 daily readers, Grace had provided that little spark that every new business owner dreams about.

In 2011, the Old Try launched with eight prints—six inspired by states that Micah and Marianna were connected to: Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and North Carolina, and two general Southern prints. They were designed as simple love letters to the South—and within the first 24 hours of being online, Old Try received 20,000 visits to its website. 

Today, Old Try features a richly diverse product line, including The South, North of South, West of South, and East of South— representing 48 states—offering nostalgia-inducing pieces of handmade art and pure feeling. Many prints are particular to a state or a college town, while others are regional. Each print is unique and handmade, created through a process that dates back to the 1440s. Says Micah, “All of the prints are different due to the nature of manmade printing itself, and that is part of the beauty and truth of Old Try.” 

The prints are created with hand-carved letter blocks, formed together to make words and phrases that connect buyers to their own special places. Micah mixes each color individually, sets the type, and runs the cotton paper through the press until it is perfect in its own way. 

Old Try recently created an exclusive print in collaboration with friends and fellow University of Mississippi graduates Ben and Erin Napier from HGTV’s Home Town. After seeing a quote in Laurel, Mississippi, Ben and Micah decided to team up and create the print, their take on The Sportingman’s Virtues by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It’s available now at the Napier’s store, Laurel Mercantile. 

“Everyone needs at least one Old Try print,” says Micah. Indeed, the Whitsons have four prints in their home—“Hotty Toddy,” “Hark!,” “Summer, in Picture,” and their famous “Manners,” which reminds everyone to not forget to use one’s manners with the phrases, “Yes ma’am, No ma’am, Yes sir, No sir, Please, Thank you.” 

Old Try creates prints for the home that its customers can hang with pride. It is not about whether you live in the South or not, but rather the place that connects you to your deepest and most sentimental feelings of home. After all, Old Try really is all about place. Micah sums up by saying, “We make things that connect to place. If it doesn’t connect a person to a place, we just don’t do it.”