Significance of the Thomas James Store

The Thomas James Store is significant historically for the part it played locally in the Mathews County community, as well as architecturally as a rare surviving example of an early nineteenth-century commercial building type. Due to sparse historic records regarding the store or Thomas James, our knowledge of the store itself is very limited. However, we can look at the role that other southern country stores played in local economic and social history to gain a better understanding of the James Store.

By the time the Thomas James Store was built, the architectural style of the southern rural store had been established as a vital part of local communities across the south. Colonial stores were operating as early as the mid-eighteenth century, once the demand for local goods began to grow with increased settlement. By the end of the eighteenth century, these country stores had become one of the most common non-domestic buildings in Virginia. Stores or storehouses could be found in towns, at country crossroads, or on plantations and farms. They were used as a place for the purchase and trade of crops and other goods. In addition to foodstuffs, stores often also sold tools and other necessary provisions, as well as excess goods produced by the plantation's slave artisans. The storehouses often imported and exported goods, selling imports to local residents and storing materials awaiting export; in Mathews, the exported goods were likely food crops, tobacco, and cotton. Southern stores like the Thomas James Store were the center of economic and social activity in the community, linking residents to one another and to the outside world through the importing and exporting of goods.14

Small southern stores are also significant for the role that the storekeeper generally played in the community. He collected crops from small farmers and arranged for their sale in his store, or for their export. He acted as a banker for farmers, allowing them to purchase goods from the store with credit against their future crop sales. Because storekeepers were such important and well-known figures in their communities, they often held other prominent offices, such as Justice of the Peace as in the case of Thomas James. Storekeepers also often held the office of postmaster, allowing them to easily send and receive correspondence, and to attract trade.15 As postmasters would have access to newspapers and magazines, the storekeeper was often more linked with events outside of the community than the average resident.

Architecturally, the Thomas James Store is significant as it is one of only a handful of surviving southern antebellum commercial buildings. It follows the general floor plan of most stores from its time period16, having only two rooms on the ground floor: a larger retail room and a smaller counting room. As in the James Store, the basic store plan would have a main entrance into the retail room, as well as a back door leading from the counting room. The James Store has a third exterior door, which is interesting as a testament to the rising popularity of a loading door in the early to mid-nineteenth century. On the traditional store, windows were generally located only on the front wall of the building to maximize wall space for shelving, and there was a counter in the sales room to separate the customers from the goods on the shelves. There was usually living space for the storekeeper on the second floor of the store, which could be reached by a staircase that rose from the counting room. The James Store is unusual in that the second floor appears to have been used for storage only rather than a living area.