July 17
100 Years ago – 1924
Ad: “Come to my house Thursday night a nice pea fowl. Owner can get same by paying for this adv. Mrs. Herbert Frye, R. 1, Ridgeway.”
75 years ago – 1949
Bids opened for the construction of a new black high school to be built on a piece of land midway between Horsepasture and Fieldale. The school would replace the former Henry County Training School, which had been in West Martinsville but was destroyed by fire.
A nickelodeon in Blue Front Place on Standpipe Hill was broken into, and all the money in it was stolen. (Nickelodeons offered continuous showings of one- and two-reel films, lasting from 15 minutes to one hour and accompanied by a piano. Standpipe Hill was the name for an area of West Martinsville.)
1960
William McKinley Bassett, the head of Bassett Furniture, 66, died of a heart attack. It happened as he and his wife were on their way home to their Eltham mansion which overlooked part of the Smith River valley where most of the Bassett plants were located. They had spent the weekend at Hotel Roanoke, and he had the heart attack while he was driving, at the intersection of Franklin Road and Jefferson Street in Roanoke. Though there was a collision with another car, Mrs. Bassett managed to guide the car to the curb, where it came to rest at a utility pole.
Jean Ann Turner, 18, of Bassett, was in Washington D.C. for the week representing the Philpott Federation at the national meeting of the Future Homemakers of America convention.
50 years ago – 1974
Area crops, including of tobacco, were doing very poorly because of an extended dry spell.
25 years ago - 1999
Martinsville High School students made five top-10 finishes in the 21st Annual National Technology Student Association conference in Tulsa: Andy Brown, Jamie Eden, Minda McDorman, Erin Martin and Fletcher St. Lawrence.
A group of friends held a fundraiser for 3-year-old Blaise Borland, the son of Anne Norman and nephew of Scott Norman. He had a form of brain cancer.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.