Dec. 18

100 Years ago – 1924

Ad: “Ten Gallons Gas Free Every Saturday Night at Church Street Service Station – By Tom Barbour and Booker Carter – Ticket With Every Purchase – Get Yours.”

75 years ago – 1949

At the County Supervisors’ meeting, W.M. Norman proposed a county ordinance to prohibit taverns in Henry county from staying open for business after midnight. He said that during recent years there had been a lot of troubles and tragedies happening at taverns after midnight. County Attorney Cary Randolph was instructed to study the legality of the proposal and make a report on it by the January meeting.

1960

Bassett Furniture Industries sales were at an all-time high, according to a letter mailed by company president J.D. Bassett Jr. Bassett reported net sales of more than $57 million for the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, more than $1 million more than the year before.

50 years ago – 1974

Bennett and Wilson Realtors remodeled and moved into the house at 818 Starling Ave. – that’s the house with the smiley face on the chimney (you can’t tell from the 1974 picture if the smiley face was on it then). Jim Wilson was the company president and Christine Bennett was the secretary.

25 years ago - 1999

St. Paul High Street Baptist Church and Albert Harris Intermediate School formed a partnership in which the church would provide mentors and volunteers for the school’s Camp Excellence. Some of the people involved were Principal Joan Montgomery, teachers Tonya Pitzer-Goins and Lynn Hall, church members Lardenia Campbell and Barbara Metoyer, and Beth Baptist of the Chamber of Commerce’s Education Committee.

National Catalog Corp., a division of Distributions Associations of Greenwich, Connecticut, announced that it was expanding operations and would create 200 new jobs in Martinsville and Henry County. Its new e-commerce and catalog fulfillment center would be in the former Pluma building in the Bowles Industrial Park.

— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.