52 Ancestors: The Old Homestead - She Ain't What She Used To Be

Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small has issued a challenge:  write one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It can be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem – anything that focuses on one ancestor.

Every generation has a place they consider a “first home” or the “home place.”  Often it is a place that evokes memories of childhood, of afternoons with grandparents, of rambles with friends through surrounding fields. One such “home place” in my family was not exactly a “home” although it became one in another life.  It was a store.

 

The Davis Store as it looked in the 1920s

My great-grandfather Walter B. Davis (1867-1934) spent most of his adult years as a carpenter like his father. He built numerous houses throughout the town of Shenandoah in Page County, Virginia. However, by 1920 he had become the owner of Davis and Sons Groceries at the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, just across the street from where he lived. At various times my grandfather Orvin and his brother Millard were the “Sons” in that business, managing things while Walter continued building houses.

Some receipts 

When I was growing up, a trip to Shenandoah to visit my cousins always included a drive by the old store building. I wonder what my grandparents thought about as they stared at the old store, which by then had been converted into two apartments.

The Davis Store as it looked in the 1980s

My grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis behind the counter

Did they recall the times when my grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis worked there?

My great-grandmother
Mary Sudie Eppard Rucker

Did they laugh recalling the time that my grandmother and her mother got in a fight that got physical? Granddaddy was just heading in to check on Grandma when Sudie Rucker stormed out of the door. “You need to get Lucille under control,” she said as she showed him her sleeve where Grandma had ripped it almost completely off. Granddaddy only laughed, but Sudie didn’t appreciate that. Inside the store, Grandma was fuming and fussing about her mother. Granddaddy laughed at that too, but Grandma didn’t appreciate that either. Granddaddy did not win any points that day.

Did they think about the time Grandma kicked a customer out of the store?  The family dog Fritz was more welcome than some patrons. One day when Grandma was working behind the counter, Effie Helton came in to do some shopping. She was a BIG woman who played on the men’s baseball team. Fritz bit her ankle, and Effie responded with a swift kick. Grandma then kicked Effie out of the store.

Momma - Mary Eleanor Davis
holding Fritz outside the Davis Store

Did they remember when Momma as just a little girl used to nap behind the counter?

Surely they laughed about the time Momma embarrassed them in front of George, a black man who sometimes helped out at the store. Whenever Momma as a child asked for some coffee, my grandparents would say, “Drinking coffee will turn you black.” One day Momma looked at George and said, “You sure must drink a lot of coffee.”

Did my grandparents wonder what became of the customers who had left their diamonds in exchange for their purchases? After Grandma died, Momma had the diamonds made into a ring.

Diamonds left at the Davis Store

My grandparents missed Shenandoah, I know, but Portsmouth had become home since World War II when job opportunities in the shipyard were too good to pass up.

In April of this year, those trips down memory lane came to a halt when a bulldozer pulled the Davis Store down. Asbestos and termite damage rendered the building beyond repair, not even worth flipping, I guess. Plus that corner lot was much too valuable for a dilapidated building to stand useless.

Demolition of Davis Store April 2015
photo courtesy of Jan Hensley

© 2015, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Shopping Saturday: W. B. Davis & Sons

Shopping Saturday is a daily  prompt at Geneabloggers that encourages bloggers to tell about the various stores that our ancestors patronized or perhaps owned.

I always knew that my great-grandfather Walter B. Davis (husband to Mary Frances Jollett) owned a grocery store at the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Shenandoah, Virginia.  Since many family stories were associated with some memory of “the store,” and since summer visits to my cousins in Shenandoah always included a pilgrimage to “the store” like some religious shrine, it is no wonder that growing up I always thought it was THE store. 

Plus, I had studied some history.  It was the Depression.  Weren’t people poor and out of work? 

Davis Store as it looked in the 1920s-30s

So imagine my surprise upon reading in Shenandoah: A History of Our Town and Its People that in the early 1900s Shenandoah was experiencing an economic boom and businesses flourished.  There were several hotels, lots of restaurants, hat shops, clothing stores, bakeries, meat markets, bowling alley and skating rink, dance halls, an opera house, furniture stores, jewelers, a business school, bicycle shop, saloons, not to mention multiples of hardware stores and general stores. 

In the 1920s-30s, Davis Groceries was just one of many family-run stores with names like Propes, Sullivan, Emerson, Foltz, Booton, and Morris.  

Davis Store as it looks today
(Image from Shenandoah: A History
of Our Town And Its People)

No matter which store shoppers went to, they probably all looked much like the Davis store:  shelves with neatly displayed canned goods, sacks of grain, boxes of cigars, and a coke machine dotted around a central wood or coal burning stove.

That’s my grandmother, Lucille Rucker Davis, working behind the counter.  My mother and her brother were probably in the upstairs apartment or playing with their dog Fritz and running through the neighborhood. 

Judging by the receipts in Walter Davis’s accounts book, he carried many staple items like coffee (38¢), sugar (45¢), bread (24¢), peanut butter (25¢), butter (25¢), soap (08¢), salt (09¢), lard (40¢), soap powder (05¢), matches (02¢), oatmeal (10¢), and potatoes (40¢ ).  But a shopper could also count on Mr. Davis for other items like thread (05¢), oil (18¢), chicken feed, and cigarettes (15¢).

This scale from the store must’ve been used for weighing fresh fruits and vegetables, and bulk items like coffee and sugar. 

Even though Shenandoah was a boom town, shopping for everyday items wasn’t easy for everyone.  Among the memorabilia that my family preserved for 80 years is a small stack of receipts paper-clipped together.  Dated from 1924-28, the receipts are all from one family.  They bought on credit and paid down a little here and there with cash.  Occasionally the bill was paid by hauling goods. 

Some people left diamond rings at the store in exchange for goods.  Sadly, the owners never came back for them.  After my grandmother died, my mother had a ring made from the mismatched stones. 

One sizeable diamond plus 4 chips
taken from rings left at the Davis Grocery Store

When I wear this ring, I can see my mother’s hand, but I also imagine the worried hands that reluctantly pawned a prized possession as barter for food at my great-grandfather's store.