This is a 25-cent store script was “Payable in Virginia Bank notes, at our store in Pittsylvania, County, twenty five cents - April 1816 - Robertson & Beavers.” These were probably given out as advertisement to get people into the newly opened store.
Maj. William Beavers was operating a tavern in 1815, when the court ordered that a 348-acre tract of land belonging to James Brown be auctioned off at the “Tavern of William Beavers.” The next year Beavers took in a partner and a store was added. The location of the Robertson and Beavers' Store is not known. It may have been on the Beavers’ Mill Tract. In 1816, William Beavers and William Robertson paid an $18 fee and put up a bond for $150 “To keep an ordinary at their business in this county [Pittsylvania].” The ordinary was what we might call today a bar with a bed and breakfast. At this early date the business and ordinary would more likely have been on the 785-acre Beavers’ Mill Tract near the town of Danville.
BEAVERS’ TAVERN was a well-known stage coach stop during the early and mid 1800s. One of the most famous regular guests at Beavers’ Tavern was John Caldwell Calhoun, who became Vice President of the United States in 1824 under President John Quincy Adams. He was reelected in 1828 with President Andrew Jackson (1825-1832). Since Calhoun was born in 1783 near Calhoun Mills in South Carolina, he probably was well familiar with water-powered grist mills. Calhoun was reelected in 1828 with President Andrew Jackson and served from 1825-1832. He later returned to the Senate and served until his death in Washington, D.C., March 31, 1850.
It was not until around 1830, eight years after the death of Maj. William Beavers, that the Muster Ground was moved from near Danville (probably Beavers’ Mill tract) out to the area near Beavers’ Tavern at Blairs on U.S. 29. This highway was the pre-interstate main road from Atlanta to Washington.
