Cornwall General Store

The Cornwall General Store, built c. 1880, is a well-preserved village store that once served a small, crossroads community in Addison County, Vermont for more than half a century. Although its owners ceased doing business about 1940, the building and its interior features remain as they were on the day its doors closed. Hoping to assure its long-term preservation, the heirs of the former owners sold the structure to the town of Cornwall in 2000. The building is significant under Criterion C as an outstanding example of an important building type in rural Vermont. It is also significant under Criterion A as an integral component of a small Vermont village, where it served as an economic and social center and contributed to the broad patterns of local and state history.

Vermont's general stores often grew from humble beginnings. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, itinerant traders known as peddlers or drummers, traveled across the countryside selling their wares and accepting whatever medium of exchange was available. These wares included combs, buttons, shoelaces, knives, woodenwares, iron cooking utensils, pins and needles, and even musical instruments. The Yankee peddler was a colorful figure regarded by many as an untrustworthy idler and a vagrant who moved from one remote settlement to another because he lacked the enterprise to set up a stable business of his own. In reality, he was often a shrewd, ambitious, tough character whose tenacious courage and keen imagination played a vital role in America's social and economic development. In this sense, this early American troubadour/huckster reflected many of those values and traits long admired in the American character of rugged individualism.

By the first decades of the nineteenth century, these roving merchants had managed to form extensive trading networks in Vermont, contributing substantially to local and regional commerce. However, as towns and villages gained population, the Yankee peddler began to lose business to merchants who established permanent stores and quickly began to dominate local markets. Peddlers continued to ply their goods at remote farmhouses along country roads or on familiar routes in city neighborhoods and their arrival was often met with anticipation well into the twentieth century in many parts of the state. Yet community residents increasingly turned to the larger selection available at local general stores, and more than a few peddlers bowed to the changing times and became owners of their own stores. Joshua Stockwell was one of those wandering peddlers when he came to Cornwall in 1793. For some years he had been a peddler, and had become familiar with the mercantile business, possessing great energy and shrewdness, he opened a general store in Cornwall, possibly the first in the area.

General stores also added to the physical form of villages and towns, becoming visible parts of streetscapes and centers of human activity. Storekeepers, who often lived above their stores, became important members of their communities as well, usually available when needed. Moreover, the advent of general stores changed the nature of local and regional commerce by giving buyers better opportunities to compare and select merchandise, a circumstance that encouraged storekeepers to offer a greater variety of products to meet the demands of their customers. Competition with other storekeepers also helped to keep prices reasonable, and even small villages sometimes supported two general stores. The Haskell General Store in Cornwall, located about one-half mile northerly of the village center and owned by Benjamin Haskell, had been operating for several decades by the time the Cornwall General Store was built by Carlton Frost next to the new town hall in 1880.

When Frost began his business, the town of Cornwall was in the process of establishing its village center. The First Congregational Church, erected in 1803, had long been a landmark, standing over a small, triangular-shaped village commonly used for picnics, church socials, and special town events. When the town hall was built in 1880, a small village began to take shape, and Frost must have sensed a business opportunity. Proximity to the church and town offices gave Frost a clear advantage over Haskell, and although the latter's store still served as a stopping point for travelers entering the town, Frost's business eventually surpassed its competitor and Haskell's store closed in c.1890.

Once firmly established, the Cornwall General Store assumed its place among other similar stores throughout Vermont. These stores became integral parts of their communities, part of daily life, and generators of the local economy. Currency was often scarce, and bartered goods were typically an accepted form of exchange. Farm Produce such as butter, chords of wood, and even local services such as blacksmithing was used as payment for the store's wares, and storekeepers then became marketers of local products. Owners of these general stores, probably Frost among them, were typically asked to post letters, relay messages, arbitrate local disputes, witness and record deeds, as well as carry on business transactions. Indeed, the general store evolved into much more than just a place to buy goods.

Records of the store's merchandise do not exist, but if the Cornwall General Store was typical of other stores during this period, it offered for sale such merchandise as soaps and spices, salt, dishes, books, and dry goods on its shelves. Hardware and leather goods also shared floor space with barrels of flour, sugar, and molasses. Axes, log chains, kettles, pots, pans, or kegs of nails could have been piled into corners or hung from rafters on chords to save what little space was available.

However, the merchandise was not the only attraction that brought customers into Cornwall's store. It was also a post office where customers could pick up and leave mail and a place of congregation where local news and gossip could be exchanged. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove, men could discuss the latest farming techniques or the local news of Cornwall and the surrounding communities. Few occurrences in the social, political, and economic development of Cornwall escaped discussion at the store, as true in 1940 as in 1880.

The Cornwall General Store was purchased on September 9, 1918, by William LaValley from Carleton Frost for the price of twenty-five hundred dollars. On September 11, 1918, William LaValley, sold the store to his son Perry E. LaValley, who ran the store until 1940. Longtime Cornwall resident Mary Peet Green remembers visiting her friend May LaValley. The family lived in the north end of the building with the store in the south end and Ms. Green recalled that the general store was a gathering place for those who wanted to just sit around and "chew the fat." She remembers that if her mother ran out of cream of tartar or some other item, Mary would occasionally be sent to the store. One of the biggest town events, she remembers, was when the store started carrying bread, or "boughten bread" as it was called. It was the talk of the town but in her home, her father said that it was alright to try but was certainly no substitute for Mother's bread.

Perry LaValley, along with his wife Agnes and the two children, May and Elizabeth lived in the structure until Mr. LaValley left the area around 1940, causing his wife to close the store. After the death of Mrs. LaValley, her daughter May continued to live in the home until her death in 1997. During the years that May lived in the home, she undertook minor improvements including a modern kitchen (the 1950s), a living room with a television, and a bedroom upstairs above the store. However, the store and many of its contents remained intact, essentially forgotten in time.

When May La Valley passed away in 1997, her niece, who remembered playing in the store as a child when she visited her relatives, inherited the building. She recognized the importance of the building to the Cornwall community and sold the building to the town in 2000 with the hope that it would be preserved.

The Cornwall General Store is an excellent example of a Vermont general store because it retains its original character-defining features including long wooden shelves and counters, worn plank floors, and a pot-bellied stove. These features were typical of this building type throughout Vermont. Because these buildings served both domestic and commercial functions, they shared features that are common to both. Though neglected, the structure remains undisturbed. The Cornwall General Store continues to exhibit its original architectural elements, exemplifying simple vernacular designs for combined commercial and residential buildings in rural Vermont for that period.

It retains not only its original features, including two-over-two windows and chamfered porch columns with turned spindle valances but an interior that remains virtually untouched, taking those who enter back to 1940 when the store was closed. General stores, including the Cornwall General Store, are unique because they complement the size, scale, and style of their rural neighbors while still exhibiting standard commercial features. As noted previously, the centrally-located building played an important role in the social and economic development of the town, contributing to the unique character of the town of Cornwall.