When I made this photograph in 2012, the Beards Creek neighborhood was well on its way to becoming a center of the hard-working Hispanic community of Tattnall County. Though located in northern Long County, unincorporated Beards Creek is home to many of the people who make Tattnall County’s Vidalia Onion business possible. La Cueva de Aguila, the Cave of the Eagle or Eagle’s Cave, is no longer in business, but there are other restaurants and churches in the area catering to the growing Hispanic population.
This building looks like it housed a restaurant or grocery on the ground floor, with living quarters on the second floor. A typical arrangement for many small businesses in years past.
My mother grew up in a similar building on Main Street in downtown Charlottesville, VA, nearly 100 years ago. Her father was the town’s undertaker; the business was on the first floor, the embalming room in the basement; the family of five lived upstairs. It was a brick house at the top of a hill. C’ville back then was very small, maybe 3000 people. And very rural, despite being home to the University of Virginia.
Back then, there was very little money in circulation, so my granddad often got paid with chickens, eggs and ham, my mother once told me. So did her dad’s father, who was a Methodist minister in Richmond. Somehow, they got through the Great Depression, but it wasn’t easy.
Thanks for this post and information. ☮️