Your opinion on why New Salem died

[Jim Garrett]

What was often the death knell of a town in the late 1800s was being by-passed by the railroad.

My grandmother's family had come from Meadeville Virginia. Meadville was located at the headwaters of the Banister river and was less than a days travel to the busy tobacco hub of Lynchburg. Through the 1860s, Meadville was a thriving town with a street grid system with blocks, a plow factory, tobacco factory, tobacco warehouse, 2 taverns, a professional building, a private boy's academy and a cotton gin (yes, otton in Virginia).

Most of the young men enlisted into Co. H, 14th Va Infantry, Armistead's Brigade, Pickett's Division. The company was decimated by the war. The loss of slave labor, and the loss of the next generation of young men, crippled the town. Then in 1874, the railroad chose to go through the next town over (Republican Grove), and that was the beginning of the end for Meadeville.

Today just about a half dozen houses are within what was the town limits, with only a couple dating back 100 years.

Did the evolution of transportation destroy New Salem?