The Thomas James Store in Mathews County, Virginia -

 encapsulated within the late nineteenth-century building you see here, is an excellent and rare example of an early nineteenth-century rural commercial building.  Although it has undergone some alterations and was likely moved from its original location, the store retains most of its original fabric and is remarkably well preserved for its age. With construction dating to c.1810-1815, it appears be the oldest building in the downtown commercial district.

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Thomas James built his store about 1810-1815, very likely on Main Street. By 1835 it was one of four “mercantile stores” in the Mathews

Courthouse area listed in Martin’s Gazetteer.  Ten years later, James sold the store and the land on which it stood. Soon after that, the new

owners evidently moved the old store to the back of the site, to be replaced by a larger building (visible in the top photograph, to the left). 

The larger building was itself moved back about 1899, to make way for the even bigger store that still faces Main Street (barely

visible in the top left corner of the photograph at top). This was built by Thomas James’s grandchildren, Henry and Francis Joseph Sibley,

who had recently acquired the property. Their descendants ran it until its sale in 1989.

This remarkably complete, historic site was thus a center for retailing in the heart of Mathews County for almost two hundred years,

most of that time being owned and operated by one family. It is now a Registered National Historic District.  

The old store has the distinction of being one of the best-preserved stores in the entire South. "We'd kill to have a building in this kind of

original condition at Colonial Williamsburg," noted a senior architectural historian from that nearby Foundation.  It is owned by the Mathews 

County Historical Society, and stands on a plot of land measuring less than half an acre immediately adjacent to the the later stores mentioned

above that are owned by the Mathews County Visitor and Information Center. The Thomas James Store has recently been stabilized, and the

Historical Society plans to open it to the public at a future date for display and interpretation. 

The purpose of this report is to compile the various informative documents that have been prepared on the James Store over the past

several years into a single cohesive report and database.  This database includes a history of the building, its uses, and its owners; a

thorough architectural description of its exterior and interior; major alterations that have been made to the building; the efforts that

have been made thus far to preserve and stabilize the building; and finally goals and suggestions for the future management and

interpretation of the James Store.