Dec. 7
100 Years ago – 1924
Astor Café manager George Crestall had just returned from Norfolk where he spent several days hunting; he killed more than 200 ducks in one day. He brought several home with him. Locally, hunting was said to be good in Martinsville, where quail was plentiful.
75 years ago – 1949
The Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce) offered a total of $50 in prized for top Christmas decorations (in categories: door, window and lawn). A $5 bonus would go to the best combination of the three classifications.
1960
The average home in Martinsville was using three times the electricity than it did just 10 years before, since refrigerators, toasters, washing machines and more had become common. The average cost per kilowatt hour had gone down considerably during that time, but bills were higher because more electricity was being used, Appalachian Power official Dorman Milier told City Council.
50 years ago – 1974
The new computer for Henry County was in Roanoke being tested out before it would be sent to the Henry County courthouse in Martinsville. The computer system cost $103,093.65. It was expected to help the County be a lot more efficient. For example, using the computer it already had, it took the count three and a half months to handle 80,000 tax tickets and the corresponding land books; with the new computer, it would only take three and a half days. Plus, the new computer could be interrupted for a more important job, then go back to its previous task. The new computer would be about to handle all of Public Service Authority’s 4,000 sewer, water and trash bills. The information from 20,000 tax accounts could be stored on a disk the size of a 12-inch record. To make space for the new computer in the courthouse, the mapping room was being moved from the second floor of the courthouse to the old jail, and the courthouse was being rewired.
25 years ago - 1999
McCabe Memorial Baptist Church offered $10,000 to help people who had lost their jobs at Tultex. Half of that was for McCabe members, and the other half for the general public. “We are concerned about the people laid off from jobs here, and not just Tultex employees,” deacon I.D. Oakes of Martinsville told the Bulletin.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.