By 1784 Loyalists on the run from the American Revolution had swelled Shelburne's small population to 10,000-twice as many as Halifax and more than Montreal or Quebec. 
 
The new settlers included George and Robert Ross, sons of a Scottish merchant, who opened a store on Charlotte Lane, adjoining their house. 
 
They traded Shelburne's pine boards, codfish and pickled herring in foreign ports for salt, tobacco, molasses and dry goods which they then sold to the new settlers. 
 
The store eventually closed in the 1880s. 
 
Today, the Ross-Thomson House & Store Museum, the only original store building remaining in Shelburne, is restored as it was in the 1820s.