Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 06/James Perdue

Overview

James Perdue was born circa 1883 in West Virginia. He became a semi-successful general store owner in rural Virginia. He and his wife raised their three children on their family’s farmland.

Biography

James Perdue was a country merchant born in Kimball, West Virginia circa 1883 and lived in Virginia for most of his life on his family’s farm. As one of 10 children to his poor mother and confederate soldier father, he had always been a man of humble beginnings. He grew up attending a one classroom school for five months every winter, which was common during the early 1900s in rural areas as post-civil war reconstruction had left the education system among other things underfunded. The years following the civil war were dedicated to rebuilding the south including the adoption of the “Underwood Constitution” in 1870 that helped create a system of free public schools. Because of public resistance of taxation to fund schools, a lot of rural towns like Stony Mount where Perdue grew up did not see these improvements until many years later. He recounted that most of his classmates weren’t able to afford schoolbooks and had to share, and that the teachers were just as poor as they were. He later dropped out around age 15 to pursue work as school no longer benefitted him and children of that age were expected to do so. By this time his family was financially stable, so he didn’t have to work to support them, he instead had the freedom to pursue what he wanted. Perdue chose to work as an errand boy for a local grocery and convenience store owner doing tasks like sweeping, taking care of the fire, and cleaning the spittoons. He loved the community that surrounded the store so much that when the store owner died, Perdue bought and took over the store at age 21 and named it Perdue’s General Store. He got married a few years later and built a home above the store for his wife and three kids to live in. Perdue was a man that wore many hats, one of which included a farmer on his family’s 160 acres of farmland, but his pride and joy was his store that he poured over 30 years of his life into. He prided himself in knowing that he was a staple part of his community as most residents had to travel into the city to get their groceries and miscellaneous items. His store wasn’t particularly successful partly because similarly to his father, he didn’t trust or believe that African Americans could be useful to his business. Most of the stores in town capitalized on cheap black labor to maximize profits but Perdue believed it would only hurt his business. It’s likely that, like many other southerners, Perdue believed that the highest capability African Americans could hold was working on the fields and that they ‘couldn’t handle’ the complex labor the general store required. It is unknown the exact date or location of his death.

Rural Life in Virginia

The end of the Civil War brought the emergence of sharecropping and years later, the ‘Golden Age’ of farming. With the rise of crop prices following the Great Depression, “farmers purchased tractors and other machinery, making their farms more productive and efficient.” (“Rural Life in Virginia, 2019). Owning acres of farmland during this time was a secure investment rather than a burden as it had been in previous decades. The Virginia Museum of History and Culture also notes, “The turn of the twentieth century also saw the emergence of a new field of study—agricultural science—that focused on improving rural life… extension agents were placed in every county to educate farmers about everything from improving livestock to preventing crop diseases.” (“Rural Life in Virginia, 2019). This allowed large scale farmers to rely more on their employees and assume and ‘overseer’ role as farming became more fruitful.

Post-Civil War Reconstruction

After that day in 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia marking the end of the Civil War, the South began to physically and financially reconstruct itself. The museum details the legislation written and military influence brought forth onto Virginia in an attempt to rebuild the state after numerous civil war battles. Included in Reconstruction was the adoption of the “Underwood Constitution” which included the creation of free public schools however, the library notes that “Public schools remained inadequately funded in most parts of Virginia for many decades.” (“Reconstruction” 2016). The underfunding detail explains why around 1890 underfunded one classroom schools were still prominent. They also describe schools pre-Civil War, “Before the Civil War, African Americans had been forbidden an education and many white children had lacked access to schools. The expense of paying the interest on Virginia's pre-war public debt threatened the existence of the public schools,” (“Reconstruction” 2016). The article names Virginia’s debt as the culprit for the inadequate school system of the time.

General Stores in early 1900s

With new refrigeration and preservation techniques, most groceries could be found at local stores more frequently than the farmers market. The article describes “rural areas and small towns, population was not large enough to support public markets. Instead general stores were operated as a “one-stop shop” where shoppers could find everything they could not make themselves under one roof.” (William L. Clements Library 2018). To maximize profit and be the most helpful to their community, general store owners had to stock a variety of items that people had to travel far into the city for. Shoppers could often find anything from a bag of oranges to some tire grease. Stores often were among the pillars of the small-town communities.

Bibliography

Interview, Smith, Essie and Ann Heaton on James Perdue, April 30, 1939, Folder 990.

          Federal Writing Project Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill

Library of Virginia. “Education.” Omeka RSS, Link, William A. “Preface.” Preface. In Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920, 8–10. Place of publication not identified, NC: The University of North C, 2009.

   Virginia Museum of History and Culture. “Reconstruction.” April 8, 2016. 

Virginia Museum of History and Culture. “Rural Life in Virginia.” Virginia Museum of History & Culture, September 11, 2019. William L. Clements Library. “Food and Beverage Retailing in 19th and Early 20th Century America.” University of Michigan, 2018.