The rural stores that sprang up all across the South in the decade after the Civil War quickly became the center of rural life. As Dr. Ann Malone pointed out in her study of Oakland, "the postbellum rural merchant was all things to his community... His store was the hub of the local universe. It was the market place, banking and credit source, recreational center, public forum, and news exchange." 1 Because of this, Prud'homme's Store at Oakland, which began operation during the Reconstruction period and remained in operation until 1982, is perhaps the most important surviving structure for interpretation of plantation life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.