This old photograph of the general store at Moredock’s Crossroads captures the early days of the 20th century in picturesque detail. It’s easy to imagine that the man with the horse and buggy is waiting to see the blacksmith in the basement while the family shops upstairs and picks up the mail.
Benjamin Franklin Moredock built the store in 1856, the year the village that would someday be known as Fordyce got its own post office. That’s the family farm in the background and across the road in front of the store is a trim two-story house with a Mansard roof that a Moredock relative built for a daughter in 1880. It’s an easy guess that she spent her share of time working at the family store. Life back then was very much a family affair.
G. Wayne Smith’s Post Offices of Greene County doesn’t say why Moredock Post Office closed in 1863. But when it reopened in 1866 it was renamed Fordyce, a familiar surname from frontier times when Reverend John Fordyce moved from Morris County, New Jersey and settled here.
In 1870, Moredock was paid $97.90 a year to be postmaster, a job he held for 32 years. By 1916, James Patterson had the job and Smith notes that when Fordyce Post Office closed in 1930 it was in Patterson’s General Store. Farmers could now drive to Waynesburg on muddy roads to get their mail and shop and general stores slowly became a thing of the past. The building sat empty until Audrey Blaker Bailey opened an antique shop in the 1970s. After she died, the old store with its distinctive front windows sat as a weathered reminder of a time when people shopped local and things were made to last.
Moredock farm is now part of State Game Lands 223 and all the barns and outbuildings are gone. But the store that Moredock built so well is back, under new management and ready to cater to those who want to shop local and buy things that are as good now as they were then.
The Dutch House is Greene County’s newest antique and everything else worth saving store.
There’s penny candy for sale in antique candy jars and kitchen must haves from the 1930s spread out beside post office boxes that retired in 1930 but still hang on the wall. The upstairs is full of furniture looking for a new family to love, chairs of every old style hang from the walls. Owner Savanna Christy’s heart is in the small details of repurposing those things of the past that can be taken home and reused. A wall of brushes and specialty milk paints shows her passion for refinishing furniture and selling the products she’s found to be sustainable, like heirloom seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Local artists have found their niche here. Her grandmother, Artis Corwin’s paintings and prints are on every wall. Winegar Pottery, produced in Graysville, is a good fit here – made by hand, beautifully useful and ready to become a family heirloom.
Savanna, 27, grew up in Greene County, got an associate degree in business and real estate and land economics and worked in Morgantown for a real estate developer. While working, she attended WVU for multidisciplinary studies including rural community development, sustainable design and landscape studies. It was on one of those cross country drives from Morgantown to Greene County to visit family and friends that she saw a for sale sign in the yard of an older house.
“As soon as I saw it I had to have it!”
When Savanna threw herself into restoring her house in 2018, the old general store in Fordyce seemed to be calling her name.
Which isn’t that surprising, considering. Savanna’s mother, Shelly Christy and grandmother Artis have been tracing their family roots back to the first settlers and then through the centuries in Europe. BF Moredock is an ancestor.
Wayne Kapp was willing to sell the old store and fixing it up for opening day became a family affair. As COVID-19 came calling in 2020, Savanna brought her antiques home from her rented space in Morgantown and began stocking the shelves. When people came in droves on opening day April 3, Savanna and her family were there to welcome them in to a world where the past waits to live again.
There are treasures to be found in historic Greene County whose stories deserve to live on. Savanna believes you can find that story “if you listen or know how to discover it.”
Store hours are Thursday to Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Check The Dutch House on Facebook for directions and to see new inventory as it is brought in.
