August 6

100 Years ago – 1924

Dr. Mary Harris Armour of Georgia, a distinguished and popular orator known on three continents, gave a lecture at 8 p.m at the Methodist church, hosted by the Martinsville Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

75 years ago – 1949

The first piece of heavy equipment had arrived for construction of the Philpott Dam project. It had been shipped by its manufacturer from Chicago early in the morning, the only time the railroad could be blocked.

1960

Russell Howard Hylton, 36, of Cheshire Street, died after being struck by a freight train opposite Virginia Mirror on Moss Street. Hylton had worked at a service station. He was the father of Tommy and Sharon Joan Hylton.

A bus with 21 passengers from Roanoke to Martinsville crashed with a pickup truck on Route 619, the road leading from Snow Creek northwest to Rocky Mount, in Franklin County. The Abbott Bus Company  bus came to rest against an apple tree. Seven people were injured. Mary Jane Turner and Sallie Ruth Clark had come from Cleveland, Ohio, to visit friends in Martinsville. They were treated at Community Hospital for laceration of the left knee and possible back injury, and possible fracture of the left leg and shoulder, respectively. The 16-year-old pickup driver, Danny Adams of Martinsville, said he had swerved to miss a child who was walking on the side of the road. Among people taken to the Franklin County Memorial Hospital were Ben Raymond Oakes, 60, of Martinsville, for minor chest injury, and Mary Sue Oakes of Martinsville, no apparent injury.

50 years ago – 1974

Eugene Burroughs, the machine foreman at Henry County Plywood Corp. in Ridgeway, had been a practicing dowser for 16 years – meaning he found water underground using a forked stick. He used a peach tree limb. He explained the practice as walking around with a stick; it does not move while being held, but when the dowser is over a water source, the stick points straight down.

25 years ago - 1999

Tultex reported that it had lost $5.6 million on sales of $86.1 million for the second quarter of 1999. Tultex’s T-Shirt City and California Shirt Sales firms had 10 distributorships. The losses were less than those of the year before as Tultex was shifting from becoming more of a marketer than a manufacturer. Charles W. Davies was Tultex’s CEO, and Kim Adkins was Tultex’s director of corporate communications and investor relationships.

— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.