Dec. 20
100 Years ago – 1924
Application blanks were being mailed to all automobile owners in Virginia who had titled their car under the new title law. Those application blanks were necessary in application for the 1925 licenses.
State Prohibition Agents B.A. Anthony and Z.C. Ramsey and Constable Robert Gauldin had a busy Saturday with three moonshine busts. First, in Chestnut Knob, they seized and destroyed a distillery in full blast with the finished product running out of the work and arrested three men. Then they trecked over to Blackberry Creek near Sanville and destroyed an immense 400-gallong submarine and 13 large fermenters. It was one of the largest stills ever found in this section of the state. Then they destroyed a smaller one of a similar type nearby on Cow Branch. They didn’t catch anyone at either of those two stills.
75 years ago – 1949
Pete Stone of Axton had just gotten a bob-tailed mule, and Mrs. Don Warren had just won a new electric refrigerator for submitting a winning slogan in a local store contest.
1960
A southbound passenger train struck a truck tractor in Stanleytown on the road leading east of Stanley Furniture Co. from Route 57 to Alternate Route 57 across Smith River. Douglas Alfonzo Clement, 18, of Carver’s Lane, Bassett, died almost instantly, and James Dooley, 27, of Roanoke was critically injured. The two men were employees of Ward’s Mobile Home Sales and had just delivered a house trailer.
50 years ago – 1974
Bob McLachlan, who grew up on Sam Lions Trail, formed the first Boy Scout troop in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The graduate of Martinsville High School and the University of Virginia was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching math in a school there.
25 years ago - 1999
The City of Martinsville began a campaign to promote its water to 400 area companies identified as heavy water users. The campaign included mailing bottles of water.
The Henry County Public Service Authority voted to enact a 90-day moratorium on penalties and interest on the water and sewer service bills for displaced textile employees. A similar policy also was enacted on property tax bills.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.