also because the principal highways of each community were the creeks and rivers. The authors of the Present State of Virginia, 1697, complained that the stores were such important centres in each neighborhood that they had a powerful influence in repressing the growth of the towns, which it was sought to foster by legislation, and they suggested as the first step towards giving an impulse to the expansion of these towns that it should be required to build or keep open stores elsewhere.[1]
The store was sometimes a room in the house of a planter; this was true in the case of the store of Robert Hodges of Lower Norfolk,
Whether the store was owned by a merchant who resided abroad, and who therefore carried on business through the agency of his factor, or was the property of a wealthy planter[2] or a native merchant, the aim of the owner
- ↑ Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair’s Present State of Virginia, 1697, p. 12.
- ↑ “To all, etc., now know ye, etc., I give and grant unto Col. Richard Lee five acres of Land lying in the County of Gloucester towards the head of Poropotank Creek, whereon the store of the said Col. Lee standeth, and is a part of a dividend which Peter Knight, merchant, deserted for want of seating.” Va. Land Patents, vol. 1655-1664, p. 47.
