Memories of Main Street: Stanardsville looks back

by Susan Gibbs
Published: April 24, 2008

On February 2, 1922, Benjamin Ivy Bickers wrote in the Greene County Record that the cattle and pigs that had roamed the streets of Stanardsville were gone, as were the barrooms.
The Town contained “stores galore, with four soda fountains and ice cream by the ton,” Bickers wrote. “We have the Red Cross and Ladies Aid Society, a large Sunday School where all go except a few moss backs and roughnecks,” Bickers wrote. “We have a High School, parent-teachers society and a community league that meets on the hill. And we have good town officers … Ours is a model town.”
It was in Bickers’ “model town” that Martha Jeraldine Morris Tata grew up over the course of the next two decades.
“I am a Greene County Morris,” Tata announced proudly to those who attended the Greene County Historical Society’s annual membership meeting at the Court House in Stanardsville Saturday.
“It has been handed down that the first man of our branch of the Morris family came down from Pennsylvania many years ago, stood in the beautiful mountains, looked around and said, ‘This is where I want to be’,” Tata continued. “My ancestors in Greene County on my dad’s side came from Swift Run Gap, Lydia, the farm next to and on the same side with the Garth’s Blue Run Service Station, and Main Street, Stanardsville.

Tata, who has recently come home to Greene after spending most of her adult life in Virginia Beach, was participating in the Historical Society’s “Memories of Main Street” program; recollections of the Town as it was in its heyday.
Tata’s daughter, Kendall Tata of Virginia Beach, opened the program. She said that as a young child her family did not go to theme parks or out west or to big beaches on vacation.
“Our family vacations were to … see our relatives. It was important to my mother that her children know where she came from … (that) she was from the era when people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,” Kendall said.
The Shenandoah National Park was established in December of 1935, and, with no Bypass to divert traffic, people were pulling themselves up.
But Stanardsville still had a hometown feel, as Tata, who grew up there in the 1930’s and 40’s, and Judy Fitzhugh Estes, who grew up there in the 1950’s recalled.
Tata, who is also a McMullen on her mother’s side, said she grew up “with my sister, Ollie Kendall, in the old (two story) brick house (on the west side) of what is now Stargazer Floral Etc. on Main Street. My mother’s garden (was) where the post office is now.”
Her family owned a mercantile a few steps away in the building now occupied by Herring Auction & Realty. There, Tata said, they sold, “groceries, dry goods, shoes, lamp wicks and oil, horseshoes, Dodge cars, and had the post office at one time.”
Family was all around. Tata’s uncle and aunt were just down the street, operating the Spotswood Inn, across the street from the Lafayette. The Spotswood Inn, Tata said, was “like a combination of a rest home and a Bed and Breakfast - mostly, live-ins.”
Another uncle and aunt lived across the street in the building that now houses the Berry & Early law firm.
Tata’s grandmother and aunt lived just up the street in the “Jack McMullan home place, which is where the Great Valu is now located.” That house was moved and still stands, looking down on the Town from above the Great Valu Shopping Center.
Her earliest memory, Tata said, was of being in that house, watching as the Bank of Greene and the Ford dealership in back of it “burned in the Great Town Fire about 1929 or 1930.  I recall sitting in a window watching with my grandmother as the flames licked the sky.”
And, growing up, Tata was surrounded by friends. The Morris’ neighbors, the “E.L. Southard family … had children near my sister’s and my age—Tillie, Buddy and Bobby.”
Tata’s mother and Mrs. Southard planted Lilies of the Valley together as a border between their two houses on Main Street.
Tata spoke more of small town life, recalling, “The big roller skating sidewalk … sledding down the hill behind the Lafayette … going to the drugstore for a Coke … swimming at a place called Hord’s Millrace, where, Tata said, “the water came up to about a 10-year-old’s chest.”
The town, in Tata’s time, had tennis courts: “Children were allowed to play on the courts certain afternoon hours; however, only adults were allowed to play during the evening hours,” Tata recalled.
Tata went on, talking about attending Sunday School at Grace Episcopal Church, where her “dad stoked the (coal) furnace … Uncle Jean took care of the hedges and lawn … my mother and Aunt Ruth (and other ladies) cleaned the Church.”
Stanardsville the Town, according to Tata, was home to shop and inn keepers, teachers, the sheriff, a doctor who made house calls, and a woman who sat out on her front porch all day, talking with those who passed by.
It was a place where children were taught to address their elders with the respectful titles of “Mr.” and “Miss,” where children thought of their friends’ mothers as beautiful and gracious, and where they were taken to meet new babies as they came along. 
And it hadn’t changed all that much when Estes was growing up in the 1950’s.
Estes, who grew up in the white cottage down the lane past David Dickey’s law office, recalled dressing her kittens up in doll clothes, placing them in her doll buggy alongside bottles of milk and pushing them down to “Miss Violet’s store, just past Grace Episcopal Church.
“Miss Violet’s store was a great gathering place for the Town folks … she so enjoyed our visits,” Estes recalled. She was also, Estes said, a great cook, and held card parties inside and outside of her home - which is now Grace House.
The Town of Stanardsville, in Estes’ day, was a place where “Miss Adeline Deane (would) invite us in for dinner … Mrs. Douglas made pies … one man got drunk every year before the World Series so he could watch the game in jail,” and where, if you couldn’t remember the combination to your post office box, a clerk would hand you your mail.
As a child, Estes said she played softball in a field off Main Street, using cow pies for bases, and engaged in water balloon fights and roller skated on Main Street.
Winters, “We went sleigh riding on Miss Violet’s field, beside her home,” Estes said. “Afterwards, we’d go to my home where my mother would have refreshments - popcorn, sandwiches, cake, Pepsi and roasted chestnuts from the fire.”
Kendall Tata picked up where Estes left off.
“My fond memories include visiting my great Uncle Ivy and Aunt Merva,” Kendall said. “They had a crayfish spring.  My brothers and cousins and I would play in that and have a grand time … we would visit my Great Uncle Jean (and) go out to his farm to see the cows.”
It was on that farmland that Tata build her new home, when she came back to her roots, and Kendall had a story to tell about that; one involving one of Tata’s childhood friends, Bobby Southard.
When Southard moved out of Town, Kendall explained, “he dug up the Lilies of the Valley (his mother and Tata’s mother had planted between their two homes) and transplanted them at his (new) home.”
Now, Kendall continued, her mother’s new property connects to Southard’s new property, and “when Mom … moved in Bobby came over with a bucket Lilies of the Valley and exclaimed, ‘Your mother and my mother planted these Lilies of the Valley together as a border between our houses; I dug some of them up to welcome you back, Neighbor.’”
After telling that story on her elders, Kendall spoke to the heart of the program: “Stories are what keep memories alive; they keep us in touch with the past and make our roots deeper. They tie families together and strengthen bonds. Simply put, stories connect us all … and keep those who have gone before us in our hearts.
“Stories enable us to share the traditions of the past (that enable us) to create a meaningful future.”