Page 38 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

time a writer for The Bulletin of the Bureau of Immigration and Mining Intelligence
arrived in October 1882, he reported there were hundreds of jobs for masons,
bricklayers, and house carpenters available along with numerous opportunities for
enterprising businessmen. “While a number of mercantile houses have already been
started,” he reported, “there are still some branches of trade not represented and
good openings awaiting skill, knowledge, and capital.”

A commercial and retail boom followed; in 1882 alone, local merchants increased
from 15 to 83, lawyers from 0 to 9, hucksters from 1 to 32, and hotels and boarding
houses from 2 to 57. By the end of 1883, grocery stores had risen from 1 to 23, 8
physicians had joined the 4 already practicing, residents had founded 4 more
churches, and workers had completed 415 new homes along with 618 new buildings.

News of the growing opportunity in Roanoke drew in hundreds of entrepreneurs
hoping to turn a profit in the new “boomtown.” Fredericksburg mining engineer John
H. Dunstan and Captain Samuel S. Brooke, the thirty-eight-year-old editor of the
Fredericksburg Daily Star, founded The Roanoke Steam Printing Company to publish
their newspaper, The Roanoke Leader.

Brooke, a Virginia Military Institute graduate, Civil War veteran, and University of
Virginia trained lawyer, put the paper’s offices on Railroad Avenue and turned out the
first run of fifteen-thousand free copies in early September 1882. Four other new
commercial enterprises started business in the new downtown district that
September as well: Teaford & Company Furniture opened a store between Jefferson
and Commerce Streets; Woolford Hardware opened on Railroad Avenue; Gravitt’s
Book & Music Store moved to Railroad Avenue from Fredericksburg; and Willis
Home Furnishing Goods, offering prices on glassware and furniture “as low as can be
offered South of New York,” arrived as well. Mining engineers and real estate firms
put offices nearby, as did attorneys, insurance agents, druggists, and even a vocal
and instrumental music instructor.

E. H. Stewart & Co. Furniture was typical of the sixty-eight new merchants in town. In
the spring of 1883, Erasmus Stewart found a spot for his business on Salem Avenue
west of Jefferson Street, and by May, he and his sister Geraldine had relocated there
from Culpeper County, Virginia. Geraldine was astonished. The town, she told kinfolk,
“is beautifully located & the busiest place you ever saw. I couldn’t tell you how many
buildings are going up now; it is not more than two or three years old and has
between four & five thousand inhabitants.” She and her brother lodged over the store,
she explained, but hoped to move “higher up in town” since their current quarters
bordered the Long Lick bog and were “not considered healthy till this part of town is
drained.” In the distance, Geraldine reported, she could see “a very handsome &
large Hotel on a high hill just out of town.”

Erasmus began advertising the following month, letting locals know that he had an
“$8,000 stock of furniture, carpets, oil cloths, mattings, curtains, wallpaper, chromos,
oil paintings, [and] steel engravings,” for sale “as low as any house in the state.” His
was the only “first class” store of its kind in town, Geraldine reported, and it would,
she predicted, “prove to be the very thing for him from present prospects; he hasn’t