I was the seventh child of 12 and lived in Esmont most of my life. I had a good childhood. My parents were excellent. I truly loved them. My dad was a deacon, and my mother was a teacher and a preacher ...

Necessities for Country Living

I was the only one in our section that, you know, didn’t go away to work. I ran the store close by and I had a station wagon. One day, one of the older folks got real sick. No one else was around ...

Life IN ESMONT 

​~ Stories by Peggy Purvis Denby

Edward Hudson Lane, Sr. and John Edward Lane​~ BY EDWARD H. (BEAU) LANE III

Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, one had to go down the hill to the spring to get water—water for drinking, cooing, bathing, and washing clothes. Sometimes rain water was caught in a barrel sitting under the roof for washing clothes ...

To dig an outside toilet, you must dig a hole four by four feet wide and six feet deep. The materials needed for this building are a saw, hammer, nails, plywood, shovels, hoe, square, and a mattock ...

Published with permission of Daniel R. Friedman                   

The rush family of chestnut grove

​~ USED WITH PERMISSION BY SCOTTSVILLE MUSEUM

How to cook poke salad

​~ as described by Nancy Wheeler

Cracklins—dried, rendered fat, lard.
Cracklin bread—cornbread made with the cracklins from the lard ...

~  by Maryann MacConochie                

- by Kathryn Wilkinson Clerico

~ by Pete Purvis  

​I have 82 years’ experience with Esmont and thousands of wonderful memories. I will share some of these moments with you because there is no way to separate the history of Esmont and Purvis' Store ...   ​​

​​​​​~ Melva Adcock Purvis

ESMONT: MY LIFE ON RED ROW HILL

​​​​​~ by Nancy Luck

The Esmont Ice Pond and House

As a young girl, I remembered the Ice Pond and House on my grandfather’s property. The winters in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s were very cold. Thus, the water on the pond would freeze two to three inches thick ...

​

​​​​​~ by Dorothy Harris

​​​​~ by Ruth Ward

​​​​​~ as told by Anna Agee Nelson              

SPRING WATER AND DIGGING A WELL

In the Spring, pick the poke early while it’s still small to the ground. Wash it real good in salt water ...

SPRING WATER AND GOOD ADVICE

​Since the quarry shut down, the town is a ghost of times past, but for those who call it Home, there is certainly life in Esmont ...  

A STORY OF MY FATHER'S LIFE AND MINE FROM 8 TO 88

​~ BY JOHN STANLEY DAWSON

The Bus Story

​​​​​~ by Anna Boling

Anna’s Ambulance Service

Hog Killin' time recollections ​~ BY peggy purvis denby and pete purvis

Bonus Story! birthin' babies - BY PEGGY PURVIS DENBY

Sausage Making

​~ as described by Virginia Nelson

​​​​~ by Lorraine Paige

ESMONT Memories

​Growing up in Esmont was a good thing, with lots of people and lots of kids. There were five stores and another temporary one in that small village of 500-600 people which also had a train running through it ... 

Back in the fifties, I believe it was 1954, I boarded a local bus that ran from Charlottesville to Scottsville, Virginia. Laws regarding where we could sit on a bus had recently been passed ... 

THE PLACE WHERE I WAS BORN

RAISED IN ESMONT

​~ BY RICHARD HEATH, D.D.S.

PETE'S ESMONT HISTORY

ESMONT, AS I REMEMBER IT...

You start raising the hog ‘til he’s big and fat. Then, in the Fall, you chase him around the yard and catch him ...

Country Terms

​~ as recalled by Waltine Eubanks

We moved to Esmont in the early 1940's from Schuyler, Va.  My parents were Lacy R. Adcock and Grace Rittenhouse Adcock.  My two sisters Janice Adcock Stotler and Kaye Adcock Denby Williams...

​I was born in a little place called Esmont about twenty miles southwest of Charlottesville, Virginia. The house where my parents lived at the time of my birth was on property owned by Mrs. Laura Lane...