Sept. 19
100 Years ago – 1924
When George J. Gravely of Mountain Valley was in Martinsville, to attend a Board of Supervisors meeting, his horse was stolen. He had left it tied at Farmer’s Warehouse, which had not yet opened for the season so didn’t have any attendant working there yet, just a couple of other horses left their for the day. The horse was valuable and an ad posted.
75 years ago – 1949
Albert Harris Elementary school for black children opened. Meanwhile, the under-construction Patrick Henry Elementary School in the City Park, for white children, was scheduled to open in November.
George Giles of Bassett filed in City Circuit Court a lawsuit for $15,000 against the Henry County Fair for injuries sustained in a fall three days before at the motordrome. Witnesses said that Giles, who had been watching the motorcyclists, fell when a motorcycle arose toward the top of the wall where he had been standing and he stepped back.
1960
It was opening day for the Martinsville tobacco market, which was in the Virginia-North Carolina Old Belt flue-cured area. The Martinsville area had three tobacco warehouses. The sales opened first at Farmers’ Warehouse, followed by sales in turn at Franklin and Woody Brothers warehouses. The general rule followed on a day’s sale was a limit of 5 hours selling time, or 2,200 baskets.
50 years ago – 1974
Local school systems were preparing to follow the new state law which required individual school systems to provide programs for all retarded and handicapped children by 1976-77. Douglas Cox, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, told Martinsville’s Special Education Advisory Committee that school systems would be required to provide special education facilities for: educable mentally retarded, trainable mentally retarded, hearing impaired, visually impaired, emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, physically handicapped, speech defective and multi-cripple-handicapped.
25 years ago – 1999
They feared Y2K problem as that many computers or their programs may fail at the turn of the year 1999 to 2000, because many computers read a new year as just “00” instead of “1900” or “2000”. County officials prepared for Y2K by recreating Year 2000 computer problems to test the emergency operation center’s response and to check and improve cooperation among agencies. Fourteen county departments took part in the exercise. Some concerns of what could happen at Y2K included: The 911 system may not work; traffic lights may not work; railroad crossing gates could be closed with flashing lights at all times; electricity goes out; it’s hard to get fuel; the jail security system malfunctions.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.