The plain cinderblock building in Suffolk that once housed the pork processing operation of Joel E. Harrell and Son Company was built in 1941. Such facilities were once common in agricultural communities of southeastern Virginia and largely dependent on local hog stock for processing. The Harrell family-owned business, which specialized in ham and sausage products, was one of the most prominent of six commercial pork processing facilities in the region by the beginning of the 1940s. The Joel E. Harrell and Son Company’s signature “Ye Old Virginny Ham” became well known throughout the state and the mid-Atlantic region as a representative of the Virginia ham tradition. Virginia hams first gained their savory reputation as early as the mid-18th century when they began to be exported. The Joel E. Harrell and Son Company building derives its significance as a mid-20th-century vestige of this tradition that—along with the region’s peanuts— played such a significant role in southeast Virginia’s identity and economy for centuries.
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Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
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DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia