Advertisement
History

Sam Harris was a wealthy Williamsburg businessman in the late 1800s. And he was Black.

By Gary Harki
Staff
•
Julia Oxrieder, pictured here on Duke of Gloucester Street, was a knowledgeable Williamsburg historian before she passed away in 2013. She spent her retirement years cataloguing old copies of the Virginia Gazette, which have been digitized and put online as “Archive Williamsburg.” Courtesy of Rebecca Suerdieck

Julia Oxrieder, pictured here on Duke of Gloucester Street, was a knowledgeable Williamsburg historian before she passed away in 2013. She spent her retirement years cataloguing old copies of the Virginia Gazette, which have been digitized and put online as “Archive Williamsburg.” Courtesy of Rebecca Suerdieck (HANDOUT)

Sam Harris had everything, and it was all for sale.

Harris moved to Williamsburg in 1872 with $70 and plenty of determination. By the late 1800s, he’d made a small fortune selling just about everything — from beds to groceries — you’d need for a home at the turn of the century.

Advertisement

“BIG STOCK OF SPRING GOODS HAS ARRIVED!” reads an ad in the Virginia Gazette from Sept. 13, 1895. “If you want Ladies’ Hats, Flowers and Ribbons, go to Harris’s. If you want Laces, Silks, or Satins, go to Harris’s. If you want Watches, Clocks, or Jewelry, go to Harris’. If you want all-wool Suits of Clothes at $3.00 per suit, go to Harris’s. If you want Straw Hats or latest Styles of all other kinds, go to HARRIS’S.”

The fact that he was a Black man in the South following the Reconstruction Era didn’t seem to hold him back, said Rebecca Suerdieck, a local historian who maintains a searchable catalog of the Gazette from that era.

Advertisement

“He was a major land owner, a major employer. Definitely someone who was integral to the community,” she said. “One would think he had less opportunities, but that wasn’t true. He was a major community personality and a community minded person.”

Harris was so prominent and wealthy that he lent money to the president of William & Mary and had a real estate partnership with a local judge, his biographer Julia Woodbridge Oxrieder told The Daily Press in 1998. Oxrieder has since died.

His store sat on a piece of land near the college, on the north side of Duke of Gloucester Street at the intersection with Botetourt Street.

Harris managed to keep his store running after the Virginia Constitution was enacted in 1902, which restored white supremacy and limited Black enterprise. He died in 1904, and his wife Joanna kept it running a few years longer. In the 1930s, the store building was bought by Colonial Williamsburg and demolished.

His ads, which can found in the digitized collection created by Oxrieder and maintained by Suerdieck, would still resonate today.

“They are cheaper than the cheapest, better than the best,” reads one. “Prices to suit the times. If you cannot find what you need at Harris’s, you need not look elsewhere for it.”

Advertisement