Our story

Wayland F. Booth ventured from farming to furniture around 1920 when he wandered from his native Eagle Point Farm at Wicomico Church.  He found himself in the furniture business in Kilmarnock, opening up in the same building that W. F. Booth & Son, Inc. still occupies today. 

It was used furniture then.  The business was destined to last, changing with the generations, but Wayland himself seemed a bit more flighty.  At one point, he even opened another shop across he street, leaving his wife Chloe to manage the original store.

“And Son” entered into the family business in 1934 during the days of the Great Depression.  There were better times to be selling furniture, but Wayland Somervill Booth knew how to make the best of a bad situation-he traded and he bartered.  He went back to his family roots (literally) and dug up holly, took it to the mountains, sold it, bought apples, brought them back to the northern Neck and sold them.  The enterprise kept the furniture store alive.  Once he got down to running the business with his mother Chloe, the store began carrying new as well as the used furniture.

When son of "And Son", Robert Somervill Booth took over in 1960, he and his wife Connie shifted the focus of the store to new furniture.  If anything it evolved into even more of a family bsiness:  there to help over the years were their own children-Robert Timothy, Michael Todd, and Cindy.

The fourth generation was officially represented when Tim, son of son of "And Son", Cindy, and Todd joined the business full time in 1986.  Tim married Tara West and has two children, Alyssa and Timothy.  Cindy married Dwight Clarke and has three children, William, Rachel, and Harris.  Todd married Leah Jenkins and has two children, Noah and Matthew.  Predictably the business changed; it has been greatly expanded and now carries all of the best and most popular home furnishing lines.

All of the Booths have this in common:  they grew up in the family business, they took their first steps and raised their children in the store, and they learned to pay attention to the furniture and appreciate its value.  They worked from the bottom up, coming to know the business inside and out.  To them, that is invaluable.