Merriman’s Shop Post Office, 94 miles from Richmond, 185 miles from Washington. (Martin, 1835:269).
Advertisement for renewal of bids for rural route for port office in Merriman’s Shop in 1843-1848 (Bradshaw, 1955:315).
The area that was later to become Appomattox County had been, successively, included in the areas of several earlier and larger counties. Appomattox County was formed in 1845. The railroad came through Merriman’s Shop in 1854, and was renamed Pamplin. The Appomattox County Courthouse burned and the county records were destroyed by fire on February 2, 1892 (Communication from Mrs. Aldah Gordon).
Mrs. Bess Franklin Mattox reported, “Nicholas Pamplin, a resident of Merriman’s Shop, was the only citizen who permitted the railroad to go through his land without charge and so the village was renamed for him” (Mattox, personal communication). For a time it was known as Pamplin Depot, then Pamplin City, finally simply Pamplin.
The home manufacture of pipes has had a long history in this part of Virginia and can be considered as well underway by the 1740s. It existed long before the Company came to Pamplin and continued after the Company had ceased operations, or as long as there was an active demand for clay pipes.
The Home Industry finally came to a close in 1953. “Mrs. Betty Price of Appomattox County was the last to make pipes. I have a mold used by her. She made them from childhood and in her prime could make 40,000 pipes per year, having been taught by her mother in 1866 when she was eight years old. Her mother had made them a lifetime before her. In the last year of Mrs. Betty Price’s life, 1953, she made 500 pipes at the age of 95. They were made from clay from her own farm.” (Personal letter from Dr. Clyde G. O’Brien of Appomattox, and her son, Jack Price of Pamplin).
A column by the News-Leader correspondent from Appomattox, April 30, (year unknown) said, Hollywood bar reached all the way to Pamplin to get Mrs. Betty Price’s pipes for use by the Indians in the movie, “Northwest Mounted Police”. Cecil B. DeMille’s research man ferreted out the Powhatan pipe some months before the film went into production. Several dozen were ordered. Frank Lloyd also bought pipes to be used in the production of “Howards of Virginia”.
Practically speaking, all of the pipes made at the homes were made by white women, and from about the time of the first settlement of the territory, as the special suitability of the local clay for that purpose was early discovered.
Miss Wilsie Thornton of Pamplin said that this industry had become especially important after the War Between the States, because with so many men having been killed and the area in such straitened circumstances, the women were badly in need of some means of making a living. The pipes they made could be traded at several general stores, or sold for a few cents, and there was no cost for materials.
One such establishment at which the local women disposed of their pipes was J. R. Franklin & Co., of Pamplin. Some of these pipes were recovered when the cargo of the sternwheeler, Bertrand, which sank in the Missouri River at Port La Force, Nebraska, April 1, 1865, (Petsche, 1970:1) was salvaged in 1968-69. The official list of artifacts recovered in the salvage operation, supplied by Jerome E. Petsche, National Park Service, who was in charge of that operation shows: