Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/393

 also because the principal highways of each community were the creeks and rivers. The authors of the Present State of Virginia, 1697, complained that the stores were such important centres in each neighborhood that they had a powerful influence in repressing the growth of the towns, which it was sought to foster by legislation, and they suggested as the first step towards giving an impulse to the expansion of these towns that it should be required to build or keep open stores elsewhere.

The store was sometimes a room in the house of a planter; this was true in the case of the store of Robert Hodges of Lower Norfolk,

Whether the store was owned by a merchant who resided abroad, and who therefore carried on business through the agency of his factor, or was the property of a wealthy planter or a native merchant, the aim of the owner