Buildings and structures.
Includes homes, churches, businesses, bridges, etc.
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Dr. James Turner Barclay
Minister and Missionary Dr. James Turner Barclay was a trained pharmacist, medical doctor, and the first minister of the Scottsville Disciples of Christ church in 1846, now the home of Scottsville Museum. Dr. Barclay continued his ministry and lived next door in the Barclay House until 1851 when he went to Jerusalem as his Church’s…
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Disciples of Christ Church
Wishing to revive the pure Christianity of earlier times, a group of local Baptists broke away from their church in the early 1830’s. They formed the Disciples of Christ or Christian Church in Scottsville and chose as their first minister, Dr. James Turner Barclay. Although Dr. Barclay was a trained pharmacist and medical doctor with…
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Scottsville Baptist Church
Scottsville Baptists built their red brick church high on Harrison Street in 1840 with property and funds donated by Anna Maria (Barclay) Moon and her husband, Edward Harris Moon. Before the church was built, Anna held services for her family and slaves in her own home at Viewmont, near Carter’s Bridge. Interest in the Baptist…
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Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Saint John’s Episcopal Church is located at the north corner of Bird and Harrison Street in Scottsville. This white frame church with Gothic windows and a scrollwork vergeboard was built in 1875 and was the second church in Saint Anne’s Parish. The photo above is from an early William E. Burgess postcard; at right, Saint…
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Antioch Baptist Church ~ Fluvanna County
Antioch Baptist Church is located in Fluvanna County about 13 miles northeast of Scottsville near the intersection of Antioch Road and Rolling Road. The church was organized in 1858 by 18 charter members, and five acres of land were deeded to the church trustees by John H. and Mary H. Burgess for a church site.…
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Mt. Zion Methodist Church ~ Esmont
Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Esmont began as a log meeting house built by the slaves of Benjamin Childress in 1828. When it was finished, Mr. Childress donated the house to the Methodist Conference. Later the congregation erected a brick building but because of a defective foundation, the church became unsafe, and the central part…
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Union Baptist Church
Union Baptist Church is the oldest black congregation in the Scottsville area and was organized in 1865 by the Reverends Henry Smith and J. A. Doll. According to Virginia Moore in her book, Scottsville on the James, the first pastor was Rev. Smith, and the congregation held prayer meetings in homes until they bought two…
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Christ Church ~ Glendower
Christ Church, Glendower, is located just east of Keene, Virginia, and about 4 miles northwest of Scottsville. Erection of this church began in 1831 and is the work of William B. Phillips, a Jeffersonian workman who designed and built a variety of homes and public buildings in his mentor’s mode. Bishop William Meade of Virginia…
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Scottsville Presbyterian Church
The congregation of the Presbyterian Church was organized first at Warren with six members on October 18, 1927, as part of the West Hanover Presbytery. The elders of the church were John B. Hart and Samuel Harris, and by 1830, this church had grown to sixteen members, thanks largely to the influence and support of…
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Fluvanna Baptist Church
The congregation of Fluvanna Baptist Church gathered for a group photo by William Burgess, taken just outside their meeting house. The church, built in 1852, is located a short distance to the east of Scottsville on SR 6. Shown below is a postcard of this church, produced from a ca. 1910 Burgess photograph. Copyright ©…
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W.F. Paulett and Son, Inc.
In 1914, William F. Paulett bought a Main Street lot in Scottsville where a blacksmith shop once stood and began construction a large building to house his lumber and hardware business. First he poured a concrete floor, one so immense in size that a group of little boys came to marvel at it later that…
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Pitts Market on Main Street
Shown above in this 2026 photo is the former Pitts Market (operated on the first floor at the left of this building from 1937-1962) and home of the William Robert and Ruth (Kent) Pitts family at right behind the porch and in rooms behind the store. In the 1950’s, Scottsville had four grocery stores. One…
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The Old Apothecary Shop
The Old Apothecary Shop, located at 510 Valley Street, was built ca. 1832. The two-story brick building served as an apothecary where town doctors prepared drugs and medicinal compounds for their patients from 1876 – 1908. As business grew, Dr. Luther R. Stinson and Dr. Benjamin L. Dillard, two practicing physicians in Scottsville, found it…
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The Beal Building
The Beal Building, located at 380-398 Valley Street, was built circa 1841-1850 on Lot 148. In 1850, Joseph Beal purchased the east half of this lot on which this large brick building with a slate roof stands. Mr. Beal began his mercantile business in this building, and many Beal businesses were housed here over the…
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Old Post Office and Griffin Building
This building is a two-story, seven bay-wide structure, located at 358 and 370 Valley Street in Scottsville. It was built about 1840 and may have served as an inn during canal days. The left side of the building served as Scottsville’s Post Office from 1884 to 1914. The right side of the building was used…
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Miss Hannah Moore’s Boarding House
Miss Hannah Moore built her Boarding House (the brick house at the right of this photo) in 1910 on the east side of Valley St. She opened it as a boarding house in 1911, and for years, Miss Willie Hitchcock lived there. Miss Willie, cousin to Wild Bill Hitchcock, taught the Lewis children in the…
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Hatton Post Office
The Hatton Post Office began operation at Brown’s Landing (now called Hatton) in late 1883. The postal facility sat just inside the front door of Brown’s Store and contained walnut mail boxes (shown above) for its customers and a wooden window through which mail and stamps were dispensed. Although a post office most often assumes…
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Traveler’s Rest Hotel
The Traveler’s Rest was a wood-framed hotel built about 1909 by Jacinto V. Pereira, who was also the President of Fidelity Nationial Bank on Valley Street. The leading hotel in Scottsville for 67 years, the Traveler’s Rest contained nineteen hotel rooms with two bathrooms on each floor. The dining room sat approximately sixty people at…
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Main Street Businesses Flooded ~ 1913
A rider on horseback wades through the high flood waters on Main Street. This 1913 flood ranked as the 8th highest recorded flood in Scottsville’s history with flood waters measuring at 25.16 ft. over flood level. Left to Right, these Main Street buildings are: Copyright © 2018 by Scottsville Museum Image Located On: Capturing Our…
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Dr. J.P. Blair’s Dental Office
Dr. Blair operated his dental office on the second floor of this white building, located beside Mink Creek on the south side of Main St. The creek ran under this bridge on Main Street, and, as Mayor Raymon Thacker remembers, everytime Mink Creek flooded, the Blair and Moon (next door) buildings filled with muddy water.…
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Jefferson Mills
Jefferson Mills, located on the Hardware River approximately three miles northeast of Scottsville, was built about 1800 and is a brick structure with four floors supported by huge handworked wooden beams. The mill originally was run by an overshot wheel that was fed from a stone dam twenty feet above the riverbed. Jefferson Mills’ original…
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The Viscountess Lady Astor ~ Nancy Langhorne Astor
Nancy Langhorne began her life in 1879 in a crowded house in Danville, VA, the fifth of her parents’ eleven children. The Langhornes of Lynchburg had been wealthy before the Civil War, but, like so many others, faced straitened circumstances in the post war period. Nancy’s father, Chiswell Dabney Langhorne, was working as a tobacco…
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J.B. Tindall’s Groceries
James Benson Tindall, Sr., began his career as a businessman at Brown’s Landing (now Hatton) in 1906 when he rented Brown’s Store and renamed it ‘J. B. Tindall’s Groceries.’ In 1914, Tindall purchased the store from Brown’s descendants and managed it until his death in 1945. This store was built on a strong foundation comprised…
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Scottsville Flour Mills
The Scottsville Flour Mills was a five-story building, located at Main and Ferry Streets in Scottsville. It was a state-of-the-art mill that was built about 1910 and ran with steam. Arthur Thacker managed the mill for Captain John Pitts, its owner, from 1911-1917, until his health worsened due to breathing flour dust in the mill.…
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Butler’s Harness, Coffin, and Casket Store
This photograph shows Butler’s Harness, Coffin, and Casket Store at 440 Valley Street in Scottsville. The building was also known as Butler’s Funeral Home because of its coffin/casket services. John Wesley Butler ran this business and made caskets, harnesses, and other leather goods at his store. The store sign, posted on the tree in front…
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Corner of Valley and Main Streets ~ 1915
Shown here are Scottsville’s tranquil Valley and Main Streets in the early 1900’s before automobiles changed the landscape and traffic patterns. See the image below as a guide to these specific buildings: Copyright © 2018 by Scottsville Museum Image Located On: Capturing Our Heritage, CDB17B72cdB17.tifB72cdB17.jpgB72cdB17.psd
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Coleman Ball’s Blacksmith Shop
This Burgess stereograph shows Coleman Ball’s Blacksmith Shop at the corner of Ferry and Main Street. A stereograph was an almost identical side-by-side set of images of a single scene, viewed simultaneously through an optical device held to the eyes like a pair of binoculars. Each eye looked at a slightly different image, and the…
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Valley Street in Scottsville ~ 1912
Burgess took this photo looking northwest up Valley Street from the corner of Main and Valley Streets. The key below identifies these buildings on Valley Street in the photo above: (1) Carlton House – on the corner of Valley Street and West Main. This building housed three businesses in 1912: Dickinson Drugstore at the south…
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Scottsville Carriage and Repair Works
Philip Palm, an immigrant from Sweden, operated the Scottsville Carriage and Repair Works in the early 1900’s. In addition to making and repairing carriages, Palm upholstered furniture, repaired shoes, and made frames. He also made coffins and served as the town’s undertaker. By 1914, Phillip Palm and two business partners, L. Gordon White and Thomas…
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The Old Tavern
The Old Tavern is located on the north side of Scottsville’s Main Street and across the street from the Herndon House and Colonial Cottage. This two-story brick building shows the pioneer split-level composition of a single and double gallery, connected by a covered outside stair. Although the exact date of its construction is unknown, the…
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C. B. Harris and Co.
The C.B. Harris Co. was a men’s clothing store operated by Charles Bascom Harris, Jr. in Scottsville. Charles (1883-1959) was the grandson of Miletus Harris, a merchant and wheelwright, who owned this three-storied Harris Building by 1860. Miletus also operated a mercantile store in this building, located across the street from the Scottsville Methodist Church…
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The Dew Drop Inn
by Evelyn Edson The Dew Drop Inn went through a number of different owners. John Pearce remembers when it was a high school hangout in the 1950’s with plenty of loud rock n’ roll blaring from the jukeboxes. He used to get a Dixie cup of ice cream that he ate with a wooden spoon.…
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Opening Day at Scottsville Creamery
Shown above is the crowd standing in front of the Scottsville Creamery on West Main Street during its 1910 opening day celebrations. This business venture evolved in 1909 as Scottsville sought new industries in their town, which they felt was geographically situated so as to command good trade from all of Virginia if it produced…
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Charles Thomas Moon’s Grocery Store
The Charles Thomas Moon grocery store sat between the Masonic Lodge and the very edge of Mink Creek on Scottsville’s Main Street. On its first floor was the small store owned by Mr. Moon, Charles T. Moon Grocery, and this building’s second floor hosted a small apartment. Mr. Moon operated his grocery roughly between 1900-1920.…
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Arson Suspected in Two Destructive Fires on Main Street in 1976
Two Large Fires Raged On Scottsville’s Main Street in February 1976, destroying a church and four businesses at the center of town. They appeared to be the work of an arsonist who was never found. The photo above of the intersection of Valley Street (left) and Main Street (right) shows the Esso Station, run by…
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Laying Cornerstone of Scottsville Plant
Date: May 24, 1944 Image Number: RT01cdRT02 Scottsville Plant was built in 1944 by the Defense Plant Corporation to help the nation’s war effort. It was designed and constructed to provide tire fabric and was operated by the Textile Division of the U.S. Rubber Company. The cornerstone-laying ceremony for this plant was sponsored by the…
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The Harris Building
The Harris Building, located at 474-476 Valley Street, was built circa 1840 as a commercial building with living quarters on the second floor. When her husband, Lafayette Harris, died in 1856, Martha J. (Minor) Harris began a millinery and dry goods store here to support herself and her three daughters, Florence, Nannie, and Etta. The…
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William ‘Billy’ Samuel Beal
William ‘Billy’ Samuel Beal was born in 1846 in Scottsville and was the son of Joseph R. and Mary E. (Flannagan) Beal. Growing up in Scottsville, Billy worked as a clerk in his father’s general store, located in the Beal Building at the south corner of Bird and Valley Streets. When his father died in…
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Colonel Henry Gantt of Valmont
by Richard Ludlam Nicholas “On the afternoon of July 3, 1863, Henry Gantt bravely led the regiment assigned to Garnett’s Brigade of Pickett’s Division up Cemetery Ridge in the battle of Gettysburg – arguably the most famous charge in American history.” Perhaps the most overlooked and forgotten man in Scottsville’s history is Colonel Henry Gantt,…
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The Scottsville Bridge
This landscape with Scottsville in the background shows the wooden bridge, built in 1907, which replaced Scott’s Ferry as the medium for transporting traffic to Scottsville from Buckingham Co. This bridge remained until 1968 when a new concrete one replaced it. See the image below as a guide to points of interest: Copyright © 2018…
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The Covered Bridge at Temperance Wayside
“We rattle through the Hardware River’s old-timey “rabbit burrow” bridge,” wrote Virginia Moore, talking about life in Scottsville between the wars. This was the covered bridge built about 1850 at Temperance Wayside where Highway 6 crosses the Hardware River. Sheridan’s departing troops had clattered over it in 1865. A painting by Cornelia Burgess Dorrier shows…
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Biking Through Albemarle with John Jones in the 1800s
Linda Listmann of Santa Cruz, CA, is transcribing her great grandfather’s journals, which began in 1875. His name was John Jones. In the summer of 1882, John was one of two astronomers, who came with Ormond Stone from the Cincinnati Observatory to oversee the building of McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia. Stone became…
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Tutwiler’s Boat Yard
The painting above by J.W. Tutwiler depicts the Tutwiler Boat Yard in Scottsville which was owned and operated by Wesley Clark Tutwiler until his death in 1871. After his passing, Wesley’s wife, Amanda Marie (Moon) Tutwiler, operated this boatyard that built and repaired canal boats for use on the James River and Kanawha Canal between…
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Barclay House
Name: Barclay House Date: ca. 1900 Image Number: B02cdB19 The Barclay House is a small townhouse on Scottsville’s Lot 31 and is next door to the Disciples of Christ Church (now Scottsville Museum) on Main Street. John B. Hart purchased this property without a structure in 1830 and resold the lot six months later for…
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Valley Street
Since the colonial era, Vally Street has been the main commercial corridor in Scottsville. A natural ravine led down the high bluffs to the ferry at Scotts Landing, providing access for wagons loaded with goods and passengers to the James River and trade with the outside world. Burgess took the photo above, the oldest in…
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Victory Hall
Victory Hall, later called Victory Theatre, was completed in 1920 on Scottsville’s Valley Street to commemorate the Armistice of World I. It was the dream of Scottsville drama teacher, Marion McKay, to have a setting for dramatic performances and traveling vaudeville and Chautauqua shows. Designed by D. Wiley Anderson, a local architect, the hall was…
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Masonic Lodge
On June 17, 1914, Scottsville Masonic Lodge #45 laid the cornerstone for its current home at 137 Main Street. It was a stirring day in Scottsville with the town band marching down Valley Street, leading Lodge members from their meeting area at Beal’s Hall to the new Lodge site. The first Lodge meeting was held…
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Dorrier Building
The Dorrier Building, located at 280 Valley Street, was built in 1912 by William Dorrier as a general merchandise and feed-grain store. William’s son, Charles Richard Dorrier (1885-1966), operated this store for fifty years under the name, C.R. Dorrier and Company. The second floor of the building was used as a storage area and apartments.…
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Pitts Building
330 Valley Street Constructed around 1910 by J.L. Pitts, this was the site of the Scottsville Drug Company, started by Thomas Ellison Bruce, the first pharmacist in Scottsville. Many businesses have operated at this location over the past 100 years, including general mercantile and several restaurants. From 2010 to present (2026) it has been home…
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Old Canal Warehouse
Built around 1834-1844, the Canal Warehouse is a large, gambrel-roofed building, located along the former James River & Kanawha Canal bank in Scottsville. While river and canal traffic flourished, the warehouse was full of tobacco, grain, and other produce waiting to be shipped to Richmond markets. Scottsville was an important shipping point on the canal,…
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Tobacco Factory
Built around 1840, this large, three-story brick building at 571 Valley Street was a tobacco factory and warehouse as late as 1880. The tobacco brands produced there included ‘Tuberose’ and ‘Mason’s Select.’ Former Mayor Raymon Thacker remembers playing in the upper story of this building around 1915 and noted there were still several tobacco bales…
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The Terrace
The Terrace is a Victorian-style residence on Scottsville’s Jackson Street, built in 1897 by Dr. and Mrs. David Pinckney Powers. Later The Terrace became the home of Miss Susie Blair after her retirement as a Professor of Speech and Drama at Hollins College. Susie was the grand- daughter of the Dr. and Mrs. Powers and…
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Bruce’s Drug Store
Bruce’s Drug Store began on November 1, 1908, under the name of Scottsville Drug Company. Dr. Luther R. Stinson and Dr. Benjamin L. Dillard, practicing physicians in Scottsville, maintained a small medicine shop in the town’s old apothecary shop on Valley Street (now 510 Valley Street). Finding it inconvenient to keep their shop open as…