May 13

By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion

100 Years ago – 1924

“About half a million dollars building now in progress in Martinsville,” a front-page story in the May 13, 1924, Henry Bulletin proclaimed. “While Martinsville has made a wonderful record for house construction as well as in other lines of progress during the last three or four years perhaps never in its history was there so much building in progress at one time as there is now,” the article begins. Most of the new construction was of houses, but also included one factory and several businesses.

75 years ago – 1949

The NAACP announced that it did not think that Booker T. Millner, Frank Hairston Jr., James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Francis DeSales Grayson and Howard Lee Hairston [now known as the Martinsville Seven, black men sentenced to death in a case of rape and assault of a white woman] received a fair trial, and that it would get involved.

1960

Patrick County announced that at least half of the $300,000 needed to construct the hospital had been raised, while also saying that the second $150,000 would be harder to come by.

American Furniture continued daily to add to its lumberyard installations at the end of Rives Road Extension, beyond the corporate limits of the city. The road was rocked and pacified and ready for the State Highway to pave.

50 years ago – 1974

An estimated 888 people attended a mass meeting on Henry County’s proposed subdivision ordinance at the National Guard Armory. Danville attorney, who had been retained by opponents of the plan, called the plan a “conspiracy” against landowners.

25 years ago – 1999

Memorial Boulevard’s Korean Memorial finally could be seen, after having been cleared of brush. Mayor Mark Crabtree told City Council a few days before that Memorial Boulevard had built in the late 1950s or early 19602 and was named in honor of city residents who had died in the Korean war. A memorial service was being planned to be held at the Korean War memorial, which was across the road from the former Williamsburg Cafeteria, but had become covered by brush.

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