Description
Footsteps from the Past II – Greenhow Store, next to Greenhow Lumber House (ticket office for Colonial Williamsburg), on Duke of Gloucester Street.
16×20 Fine arts print on canvas with border.
© 2017 Suzanne E. Denion. All rights reserved.
According to the Greenhow Tenement Historical Report[1], John Greenhow was a wealthy and prominent merchant in Williamsburg. His shop carried many varied articles of merchandise, featured in the Virginia Gazette, December 3, 1767. In the Virginia Gazette, September 14, 1775 edition, a letter was printed complaining of the injustice and unreasonableness of Greenhow’s “prices for goods.” The letter went on to state that when a country labors, “convulsed and agitated with the miseries of a civil war, its commerce in a manner stagnated, and a heavy load of taxes to support its internal price,” it was “unpardonable” for any person to impose on the public “unreasonable prices for goods.” The writer went on to suggest that the offender be “arraigned before a proper tribunal.”
[1]Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research (Report Series – 1258);
