This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

(20)
more productive land. Thus we find the population of the lower Virginia Counties much smaller as the years progressed.
In the early days, there existed in every community the country store. There was also a very unique supplier of the necessities of life, the so-called "Syrian Peddler". This man would travel from plantdtion to plantation, carrying in a pack upon his back an unbelievable variety of products. They seemed to have an anormous strength to be able to carry such a heavy load for such long distances. Wherever night found him, he woul< spend the night. In the early days a stranger was welcome at every home.
My uncle, Winston Turner, who lived in Louisa County, Virginia, near Travillian Depot, owned a country store, along with several other business ventures. His son, James W. Turner of Orange Park,Florida, sent me his father's account books. These books and other data he sent me, give a very accurate account of the prices paid for many everyday items from 1896 to 1914.
The following excerpts are from these account books.
100 lb. sack of salt fifty cents 8 yds. of cloth twenty-four cents
2	mens shirts twenty-two cents 1 bbl. of lime fifty-five cents
12	head of cabbage twenty-four cents 1 bus. of potatoes twenty-five cents 1 suit of clothes three dollars 1 lb. of candy five cents 1 gal. of whisky one dollar-fifty cents 1 lb. of shot five cents 1 lb. of powder eight cents 6 gal. black-berries eighteen cents
6	salted smoked fish five cents
5	lbs. suger twenty cents
8^ lbs. of beef thirty cents
1	pr. mens shoes fifty cents
2	lbs. hominy five cents
1 cord of wood fifty cents
1000 ft. of lumber eight dollars
100 lbs. barb-wire fencing one dollar
7	balls of cotton thread seven cents
6	lbs.of coffee thirty cents 100 lb. keg of nails one dollar 1000 brick four dollars
1 gal. corn meal six cents
1 ham twenty-five cents
1 bbl. of flour 198 lbs. three dollars
3	bushel of peaches twenty-five cents
35 rail-road cross ties two dollars and eighty cents