Covil’s General Store in 1921
In 1921 Lewis Covil opened and General Store on his property on Highway 17 between Jacksonville NC and Wilmington NC.
The only general store between Jacksonville and Wilmington North Caroilna, It served everyone for miles around.
In 1922 Lewis built the house next to the store and lived there the rest of his life.
The store opened at 6:30 am until 9:00 pm except on Saturday when it was opened until midnight. It carried most everything a country family needed to survive.
The entire family worked in the store and has never regretted the experience it helped them so much in later years.
Math became easy after having to learn total orders up.
Some of the items stocked , Groceries , except for fresh meat which required refrigeration , however the ice man came on Friday so both fresh and smoked sausage were carried for the week-end customers .
Big oil sausage was dipped from large glass jars and sold for five cents, Johnny cake a penny, Candy several pieces a penny, A large slice of cheese cut from a round was ten cents white meal was ten cents a pound , Lard was dipped from a lard stand into a wooden tray and sold by the pound .Molasses was pumped from a large wooden barrel into whatever the customer had brought with him usually a tin bucket . Dry Good included cloth , as a bought dress was heard of .
Homespun for sheets and pillow cases , as well as undergarments , shirts , pants ,overalls, shoes , stockings, socks, hats, long johns, Black Bloomers , oil cloth , and other things too numerous to mention .
Patent medicine including Castoria , turpentine , Aspirin , Sweet Oil , Litre , Castor Oil, , Sloan’s Liniment to name a few .
Later when cars were more plentiful Gas, Oil and tires inner tubes and a few car parts were added .
A full line of chicken and Animal Feeds were carried also , but Lewis never sold Beer or stayed open on Sunday.
Lewis said he would rather starve than do so.
During the depression he carried the accounts of quite a few Blacks as well as whites .
Lewis said that every Black’s paid their bill , in full each week, he could not say that for all of the whites.
In his last years Lewis carried very little stock , being unable to look after it , he just had a place where his friends could come sit and talk to him and not be under Mrs, Nellies feet.
He was well liked and respected.
When he died the comment was made“ I have never seen a longer Funeral Procession anywhere around here, “ his friends both black and white, came to Prospect Cemetery to say Good Bye and show their respect.
Shared By: Annie Lila Covil Mott
DEPRESSION STORY
Depression was from 1929--1940
(Written by Victor Covil -Eldest son of Lewis A. Covil )
The things that we sold in the store , why naturally were down to pig meat , was six to seven cents per pound.
Lard about that price , in other words groceries were real cheap if you could get the money to buy them.
If you don’t have the money to buy them even if it isn’t but one penny , if you don’t have that penny it is still not cheap.
The people I know that we handled in the store, it got to if we handled fifty or sixty dollars a week for six days work that was a pretty good average week for cash coming in.
The prices were down and clothing was priced low also.
The cloth, we sold cloth and it was about ten cents a yard .
Dad sold shoes, and things for the farm like plow parts , plow points etc .
Hoover was president at the time and they called it Hoover Days .
In the city at that time they had soup lines because we did not have any welfare or unemployment compensation or security or anything of that nature to help us out, so we just had to paddle our own boat .
The only help I can think of was the “ Old County House “ out there , where the elderly would just exist and that was about it.
Very few people went to hospitals because they didn’t have The money
Even though it only cost about two or three dollars a day , they couldn’t go because they didn’t have the two or three dollars .
I remember when dad had pneumonia they just fought it right there in our home.
Aunt Lila came down , it was in August or September and I slept on pallets in order for Aunt Lila to have a bed to sleep in.
If someone was taken to the hospital It was because they were near death.
At that time people lived together and worked together and no body had anything so it didn’t really worry you too much because the guy next door didn’t seem to have much more than you did and we tried to help one another .
Our way of living today involves so much financing and sometimes I think it might help us to have to go through a depression again.
I don’t want to go through another depression but it might help us appreciate things more.
One reason that people were able to survive at that time was because about eight
( eighty ? ) per cent of the population were farmers .
This made it possible for people to get food even though they didn’t have any money to pay taxes or buy shoes , but at least they worked hard and they did have food.
I got married during the depression and rent was cheap ,
I paid a dollar a week for a apartment with lights and water
Furnished and we would get out and walk down town .
The street cars was only eight cents but we didn’t have the eight cents so we walked .
There was no jobs to be had , instead people were being laid off .
For instance my wife’s dad had been working on a job sixteen years and got laid off.
That was the way it was all over the country.
About 1929 when the depression started , my understanding of what happened was that some people who were millionaires went broke over night .
All of a sudden there was nothing there and their business just collapsed .
And people who had been really use to living well committing suicide and everything else because they just couldn’t get a hold of any money.
It was really quite a shock.
Banks were going broke also.
In this area there was a bank where dad traded with quite a bit with Tom Cooper , president of the bank and Tom was trying to help people out , he wasn’t a crook.
But finally the bank went broke and I don’t know how much money dad had in that bank.
He had gotten a little small percentage of it out , and so that way the bank going broke created another hardship on those who had a little money in the bank.
But in the process they put in what people called a Public Works Project , on which at first maybe people made a dollar a day but they worked about twenty days a month .
With this they could get some flour, lard, or something so they could make some biscuits .
Also some could get some second grade flour from the court house .
I remember Viola’s daddy would sent Charlie or someone down there to get it because he hated to go down there ,the worst to be sure it was embarrassing to him .
He had such a good job and had been used to walking around to the store and purchasing groceries .
It was quite a change in people’s way of living.
I remember that just side of Alexander’s back off the road was a sand pit.
In that area a fellow named ‘Mintz ’ bought some land and put up a house and dairy , this man tried to sell milk and then he got to bootlegging and had to paint the milk bottles white so it would make the bottles look like milk .
He wasn’t a dishonest man but he did do things that he never dreamed of doing in order to take care of his family.
From my understanding he had borrowed one hundred dollars from someone and the man was very lenient with him but he gave him a note on his place for that one hundred dollars and couldn’t get that hundred dollars no way at all and it went on and on and the person didn’t exactly push him to that extent but he was on him and finally he told him to take the place for that hundred dollars
And all his life’s work went down the drain for that hundred dollars .
Well Jim Canady did the same thing on that old property of granddaddy’s things got tight with him and he borrowed a little money and he couldn’t get the money to pay it back and so he lost a small piece of his property down by the creek.
When Roosevelt came in office in 1933 he closed all of the banks for a few days and then in order to get things organized the US Government insured your deposit up to a certain point.
I believe it was three thousand dollars .
Then Roosevelt came out with another work project which could pay more money ; it paid about twelve dollars a week and that was big money at that time.
Roosevelt did get the dollars moving which during the depression the dollars had stopped , just a few people had the money.
When it gets like that ,of not moving , a lot of people suffer.
During those days people did learn to cope with these things .
I don’t know of anybody that starved to death in the area I was in.
I worked all kinds of ways to try to make a dollar .
I drove the school bus for forty dollars a month and thumbed the way to work and back
( ten miles each way )
Some times the man who drove for Swift and Company who was going out to take orders from dad would stop and pick me up at seventeenth or eighteenth and Market and take me home.
Then it got to where a man who worked for National Biscuit Company would pick me up.
Some of them mornings it was so cold down to the twenty’s and I was out there before day thumbing a ride to work.
When babies were born people did not have money for a doctor and so often mid - wives made the delivery of the baby.
Of course in my neighborhood my dad was able to have the doctor deliver his children .
When Marie was born Dr. Moore came and stayed all night until she was born and his charge was about thirty-five dollars.
The depression possible began to break in 1940 ,things began to get a little better .
In Wilmington area we had Coast Line Railroad and one or two cotton mills, sawmills and a little fishing .
That was about the source of money coming into the area.
Shared and Written By : Lewis Victor Covil
Lewis Alamance Covil ( Coville )
The name was spelled COVILLE when the Grandparents of Lewis Covil came from FRANCE in 1843 and settled in Marine NC .
They were Hut ( nickname ) and Elizabeth Tyndall Coville and their infant son William Francis Coville
Little is known about Hut as he only lived about a year after coming to Marine NC. But we do know that Anne Elizabeth was born February 19th 1822 and died February 27th 1848.
After Hut Died she married Zorobabel MARINE and they had three children , Wiley , Sarah and Lewis
William Franc is Coville was born April 13th 1842 and died may 17th 1918 .
He spent most of his life at Marine except for the time he was in the Confederate Army .
He was wounded in Sharpsburg and also at Gettysburg .
He was in the army Hospital several times and was taken prisoner by the Yankees on one occasion, however he escaped and later returned to Marine NC where he married Elizabeth Anne Williams .
She was born Dec 24th 1852 and died June 23rd 1905 and was the daughter of William and Susan Williams.
Elizabeth and William had nine children six of which reached maturity .
They were John Richard , William Vernanza , Birdie Leon , Onnie Lema , Lila Edel , and Lewis Alamance .
Lewis Alamance Covil was born Dec 4th 1875 and died March 11th 1967 t age of ninety - One.
The family was poor and the entire family had to work on the farm as it was their main source of food.
Being small for his age , Lewis was unable to do much work so was allowed to attend school more than his brothers.
When Lewis was eighteen he worked for his Uncle in his local general store , saved his money and two years later opened a grocery store in Kinston NC after two years of this , he sold out and he and his brother Leon opened a restaurant on Dock Street near Front Street in Wilmington NC.
In his own words they went broke .
He then went to Baltimore MD. Where he worked at various jobs until his mother died in 1905.
He returned to Marine and shortly after he and his brother Leon bought a tract of land on the sound near Kirkland a small community near Scotts Hill NC.
They divided the land and Leon built a house on his part .
Lewis lived with Leon and his wife Etta Millis Covil until he married Hattie Lavada Canady in 1910 and built a house on his property .
Hattie was born June 13th 1888 and died September 20th 1918 during the flu epidemic .
She was the daughter of Joseph Robert Canady ( Bob ) and Mildred Anne ( Minnie ) Carney Canady both of whom are buried at Prospect Cemetery near Ogden.
Hattie was buried at the Methodist Cemetery at Scotts Hill NC.
Hattie and Lewis had three children , Lewis Victor , Annie Lila , and Ellis Marion .
After Hattie died Lewis and Leon bought another tract of land on what is now known as Highway 17 or Market Street and then know as Kirkland .
Leon built a house on his part and Lewis again move in with him taking his two oldest children , Lewis Victor and Annie Lila Covil
With him.
The youngest Ellis Marion Covil being only two at the time was sent to live with his Grandparents Joseph and Mildred Canady at middle sound Rd.
In 1921 Lewis Married Nellie Kathleen Gornto , she was born August 12th 1897 and died 1981.
She was the daughter of Frank and Sarah Gornto of Marine NC.
Lewis and Nellie had five children , two died at infancy,
The ones that lived are Elmo Alamance , Sarah Elizabeth,
And Ella Marie Covil.
Also in 1921 Lewis Covil opened and General Store on his property on Highway 17 between Jacksonville NC and Wilmington NC at that time .
I was told it was the only store on that Highway between Jacksonville and Wilmington at that time.
I know it served everyone for miles around.
In 1922 Lewis built the house next to the store and lived there the rest of his life.
The store was opened from 6:30 am until 9:00 pm at night except on Saturday when it was usually opened until around midnight .
It carried most everything a country family needed to survive.
The entire family worked in the store and I have never regretted the experience as it helped me helped me so much in later years .
Math became easy after having to learn total orders up .
I do recall some of the items stocked , Groceries , except for fresh meat which required refrigeration , however the ice man came on Friday so both fresh and smoked sausage were carried for the week-end customers .
Big Oil sausage was dipped from large glass jars and sold for five cents, a Johnny cake was a penny, Candy was several pieces a penny, A large slice of cheese cut from a round was ten cents white meal was ten cents a pound ,
Lard was dipped from a lard stand into a wooden tray and sold by the pound .
Molasses was pumped from a large wooden barrel into whatever the customer had brought with him , usually a tin bucket .
Dry Good included cloth , as a bought dress was heard of .
Homespun for sheets and pillow cases , as well as undergarments , shirts , pants ,overalls, shoes , stockings, socks, hats, long johns, Black Bloomers , oil cloth , and other things too numerous to mention .
Patent medicine including Castoria , turpentine , Aspirin , Sweet Oil , Litre , Castor Oil, , Sloans Liniment to name a few .
Later when cars were more plentiful Gas, Oil and tires inner tubes and a few car parts were added .
A full line of chicken and Animal Feeds were carried also , but Lewis never sold Beer or stayed open on Sunday.
He said he would rather starve than do so.
During the depression he carried the accounts of quite a few Blacks as well as whites .
He told me that me that every Black paid his bill , not a little each week but in full, he could not say that for all of the whites.
In his last years Lewis carried very little stock , being unable to look after it , he just had a place where his friends could come sit and talk to him and not be under Mrs, Nellies feet.
He was well liked and respected .
When he died I heard the comment “ I have never saw a longer Funeral Procession anywhere around here “ his friends both black and white , had come to Prospect Cemetery to say Good Bye.
Nellie stayed on at the old place for a while after Lewis death , but was a little afraid since she was along , so soon moved to East Wilmington where she lived the rest of her life.