Peninsula In Passage

“He had the heart of a Teddy bear,”Theresa Twisdale, his store manager for a dozen years, said. The crossroads, located at the junction of Virginia routes 337, 125 and 627, was originally named Persimmon Tree Orchard. Craig Parker believes the name “Driver” came from three brothers named Driver, carpenters and wood workers, who came from England to work on nearby St. John’s church in 1600s. Two of the brothers settled in Isle of Wight and the third one in Driver. The area saw military traffic during the Revolutionary War and its share of celebrities since then. According to local historian Andy Maxey, in 1783 both Benedict Arnold and Lord Cornwallis led British troops through the area with American troops, under a Col. Josiah Parker, hot on their heels. General Lafayette visited in 1825 and both Federal and Confederate troops passed through during the Civil War. William Jennings Bryan spoke at the Masonic Hall there about 1913 when he was Secretary of State. When Midway Park was operating in the early 1960s the entertainers, stars of rhythm and blues, frequented the Driver stores. The Driver train station was built in 1860 and the crossroads thrived as the shopping hub of the surrounding truck farms that replaced plantations after the Civil War. E. J. Driver ran a large store there.

Ronnie Gould of Rio Grande Traders

In 1996, the Suffolk city assessor counted 30 houses in the village. Five years later the number jumped to 112 and more than doubled by 2006. Down the road on the corner of Nansemond Parkway and Shoulder’s Hill Road a vast industrial park, Northgate Commerce Park, opened in 2000 with a projection of more than 6 million square feet of building construction when filled.

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