Jan. 5 through the years
1924
Martinsville Bakery made Quality Bread and Cake, phones 28 and 95. Its advertisement recommends slicing through the loaf as much bread as you’d want for the meal, “press the slices closely together. Pop in on hot oven until heated through. Then pop out. You’ll enjoy it so much you’ll want to eat twice your regular Bread portion. And not a crumb wasted.”
Ad for Schilbes’s Bakery, Martinsville: “It is rumored that a certain fastidious young lady of town kneads bread with gloves on. This incident may be peculiar, but there are others. NOW, we NEED bread our showed on. We need bread with our shirts on. We need bread with our pants on, and unless we can corral more of the business of this vicinity, we will soon need bread without a d------- thing on, and this town will be a Garden of Eden. – Get Busy and Send Your Orders for Home-Made Bread to Schilbe’s Bakery, Martinsville, Virginia.
1949
City Building and Plumbing Inspector Jimmy B. Jones reported that in December, about $30,000 was spent or authorized on construction in the city. Sixteen permits were issued. Two houses were authorized, for Ike L. Anderson on Keel Street ($7,509) and a parsonage ($6,530) on Lavinder Steet for the Church of God.
1974
Mr. and Mrs. Robert V. Steagall of Martinsville and Mr. and Mrs. Newton Day of Roxboro, N.C., sued the Howard Johnson’s Hotel in New Orleans and the Howard Johnson’s chain. Their children, Mrs. Elizabeth Day Steagall and Dr. Robert V. Steagall Jr., were killed in the hotel on their honeymoon by Mark James Essex during a 24-hour siege of the hotel by a band of snipers. Eight people were killed and 21 were wounded. The suing parents asked for $3.1 million each, charging the hotel management and corporation for neglect in failing to protect its guests.
1999
Pluma Inc. cut up to 450 jobs, closed two plants and six outlet stores. The cut would be 21% of the workforce. Workers from the Eden, N.C. plant, which would be closed, would work in the Martinsville and Chatham plants. The Rocky Mount sewing plant, where 225 people worked, would close. Pluma’s six outlet stores would close; they were in Martinsville (at the Patrick Henry Mall), Eden, Rocky Mount, Vesta and Chatham.
— Information from those years’ editions of the Henry and Martinsville Bulletin.