While giving a talk in Ocean City last week on America’s complex history with alcohol, an audience member asked about Temperanceville, a small village on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Although I had driven past it for years, I had never taken the turn off Route 13 to explore the place. However, prompted by the question and with research to do at the Accomack County Courthouse, I finally made the detour.
Temperanceville is a quiet community of about 300 people located 7 miles over the Virginia line. Its name is a relic of a once-powerful social and political movement that shaped 19th-century America. During this era, churches, women’s groups, and reformers on the Eastern Shore campaigned tirelessly against alcohol, linking it to poverty, crime, and broken families.
As its name suggests, the citizens of Temperanceville stood firmly behind this movement. In 1824, they organized a “Sons of Temperance” club. At their first meeting, they swore they would never sell their land to put a barroom on and voted to change the name of their settlement to Temperanceville. At some point, the Sons also built a lodge. 1
Their dedication proved remarkably enduring. Nearly a century later, the Accomac News reported in 1922 that not a single drop of whiskey had ever been sold openly in Temperanceville. The Peninsula Enterprise reinforced this claim, noting that the citizens “never drank or sold liquors.”2
Fast-forward to today. An unimaginable change, at least from the standpoint of its 19th-century teetotalers, has taken place. While Temperanceville was once a resolute dry town, this is no longer the case. In the heart of the village, along Route 13, a convenience store now sells beer and wine to the thirsty customers.
Nonetheless, the legacy remains. The echoes of the past persist in the name, in the archives of old newspapers, and in the collections of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Heritage Center. And, of course, in the curiosity of the library patron and others who inquire about it, all reminding us of a fascinating chapter in the history of the Eastern Shore.
Endnotes
- History of Temperanceville | The Countryside transformed: (n.d.). https://eshore.iath.virginia.edu/node/1935 ↩︎
- “History of Temperanceville,” Peninsula Enterprise, (Accomac, Va), May 13, 1922 ↩︎