November 7, 2019 / Joanne Yeck

New Store in Buckingham County: Part I

Miss Lulie Patteson

(Courtesy Gordon G. Ragland, Jr., Maxey/Patteson Family Collection)

If you aren’t already acquainted with Mary Louise “Lulie” Patteson, click on the link below and search the Slate River Ramblings archive for many posts about her and her writings.

Lulie Patteson: Buckingham County’s First Historian

In 1959, Lulie Patteson wrote an article for The Daily Progress entitled “New Store Important In the Events of ’65.” It begins like this:

New Store seems to be a misnomer for the weather beaten old building near Sheppards in Buckingham County. It is now overgrown with unpruned shrubbery and weeds.

By legend it was the first store in Buckingham and was built by a man named Venerable, who had a store at Hampden Sydney and enlarged his merchandise business by building a “new” store in Buckingham. We haven’t found any proof of this story.

However, the “new,” has clung to the name more than a century. At a later date the store became the property of a prominent Jones family, where it has remained until recently.

The first Jones family built the store as a stagecoach stop on the road from Richmond to Lynchburg, as well as developing the store into a merchandise center.

The first stop in Buckingham County on this road from Richmond was called Lackland’s Well, probably because the horses were watered there.

New Store was the second stop and many a well known personage spent a night there. Aaron Burr was one passenger the time he was taken to Richmond for his trial before Chief Justice John Marshall.

Coming Next: New Store in Buckingham County: Part II