Glen Morgan left Mathews County as a young man, pulling time in the Coast Guard and working for Thalhimers Department Store in Richmond before settling into a 20-year career as a scenic designer and manager at WHRO Public Television in Norfolk.

But Morgan never forgot his roots, and in the years after moving back home to Mathews in 1986 he created a homage to his very first job—that of a clerk in a country store.

On his property in Mobjack, Morgan built a facsimile of the store where he worked—the old Howard Brooks country store that once operated in Laban—gradually filling it with a plethora of objects that might have been found in a general store in the early-to-mid 20th century.

On the porch of the store are shoe lasts, an old wagon with wooden wheels, a cistern pump, a child’s sled, a tobacco grinder, a milk can, and other old items. Inside are toy cars, dolls, games, dishes, grocery boxes and cans and bottles and jars, tob...