Walter Perry Store and Homeplace A Tribute to Hopkins Area

Walter Perry Store Active 80 years in Hopkins Area

By MaryBeth Carpenter

Just north of Zebulon, on N.C. 96 at the corner of Lizard Lick and Fowler Roads, sits an old country store. Its sign boasts its establishment in the early 1900s by Walter A Perry. The store fed and supplied area residents through two World Wars and the Great Depression, and was run by Walter Perry until he retired before his death in 1966. His son Roy then took over as owner and ran it for another 25 years.

Walter Perry built a one-story triple A house on land adjacent to the store in 1919, and farm buildings surrounded the 100 acre farm and complex which backed up to Little River. The complex had an outdoor kitchen, a separate wash house, and a large number of farm buildings sprinkled across the dirt road.

Walter’s grandson Jim Perry bought the store and surrounding land from part of the farm complex a few years back. He has recently restored the old country store and is filling it with antique items that customers would have found there on visits from the early part of the last century. “It is a testament to my grandfather Walter Perry and this area,” Jim reported. He moved several farm buildings from across the street onto the property behind the store and is restoring the adjacent farm house and its original separate kitchen building.

Walter Perry was born in 1879 to Marcus Wayland Perry and his wife Rosa Horton. Shortly after he was born, Rosa died of pneumonia. A year later, his father married again, to Mariette W. Liles, and had eight more children.

Walter became a tobacco farmer, and according to family records, built the store in the early 1900s and became a merchant. He married Nannie Lou Bunn and they bore and raised nine children on the store – farm complex. The expanded the house as their family grew, added on a kitchen in the back, and a wash house in the 1940s and became active in life in the Hopkins area countryside. They added a chicken house, stables, stalls, a carriage house and a corral on the property, which extended across the dirt road onto property along both sides of the road.

Through the store, Walter sold cheese, sausage, crackers, tobacco products, and in the decades to come, gasoline and sodas. A pot-bellied stove kept customers warm and many came in to buy lunch, snacks and household wares through the years. Family members recall sausages being offered in several styles to please customers. Cheese was sold by the slice or a weighted wedge. The store was a gathering place for news and visiting and was often crowded.

One daughter, Rachel Mae Perry, wrote in her memoirs some memorable sayings of Walter and Nannie. “The first shall be and the last shall be first some day.” And “Drive slow in rough places: stop, look, listen and think.” And “Don’t ever be ashamed of doing right.” In addition to his titles as farmer and merchant, Walter became Justice of the Peace for several years and served as Sunday School teacher and church superintendent of the Hopkins Chapel Church for 30 years. Many of his 24 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren visited and swam in the river behind the house and enjoyed ice cream and candy from the store.

He kept ledgers from 1930 onward detailing customers’ charges and his own stock purchases.

After Walter’s retirement, his son Roy Perry took over the store and ran it with family help. Nanny Lou died in 1963, and Walter died in 1966. The second generation was running the store and farm and all was going well. Then tragedy struck.

On January 30, 1981, Roy was robbed by three men. Roy was hit on the head with an iron pipe, and then men stole $995 and a .35 caliber pistol. They placed a bar across the front door to keep customers out and to conceal their crime, and they left by the back door, stealing Roy’s pickup truck. A Texaco gasoline driver filled the store tanks later that day and found Roy unconscious. He was rushed to Wake Medical Center where he died of a fractured skull and other injuries the next day.

Three men were arrested for the beating death and robbery. One of the men, Dwight A. Hunter, age 20, was sentenced to life in prison for his crime. Carl A. Reid, 16 was also charged as an accomplice. A third man was charged as an accessory after the fact of first degree murder but died of a heart attack before his court date.

The family closed the store, and the building remained empty for three decades. Walter’s children who had inherited the estate divided lots. A daughter had lifetime rights to all of the buildings. After she died an auction was held.

Grandson, Jim Perry is the son of Walter’s daughter Rosa, and in 2018 he bought 17 acres and all of the complex’s buildings including the house and store. He moved several farm buildings across the street and behind the store up on a knoll. Jim and his wife set to work restoring his grandfather’s country store. Several of the farm buildings have been restored, and he rebuilt the outdoor kitchen and the property’s original well.

“I am re-establishing the homeplace of Walter A. Perry, to honor him keep this part of the area’s history alive,” Jim Perry stated. “I want it to be part of the community forever. This store fed a lot of people through two World Wars the Depression.’

“My grandfather never went further than to Raleigh and Louisburg his whole life, but the Perry name kept a lot of people afloat during some tough times in the past,” he recalls. Jim took some wood from the store’s front rooms and created a bathroom in the store, placed the original store’s bench on the front porch, and restored the sign. He saved the original walls, floors, front doors, and is re-creating the store’s interiors with auction finds. A cash register from the 1930s sits on the burnished counter and a 1920s era cheese slicer adorns the opposite end. A table from the 1920s provides a place for visitors to be seated, and advertising signs and family photos line the walls.

The store, the restored farm buildings and intact and original home are a fitting tribute to the Perrys contributions to the Hopkins area for so many decades.

Copyright 2022 by MaryBeth Carpenter, Executive Director of Preservation Zebulon.

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