August 7

100 Years ago – 1924

The Virginia apple market was suffering due to, as apple growers called it, the marketing of inferior apples dishonestly branded. Fruit-growers meeting in Harrisonburg voted to institute state inspections to farmers who belong to local organizations, guaranteeing to pack their apples in accordance with standardized grades. The pilot program for that had been done in Frederick County, reportedly to great acclaim.

75 years ago – 1949

The new radio station in Chatham Heights was being built, with cement being poured in this week in 1949.

“Southern Negros have integrated lunch counters in 27 southern cities and ‘can be expected to increase their economic and moral pressure for equal treatment’ in other localities, the Southern Regional CAouncil said Saturday,” the Associated Press reported. In Martinsville, the lunch counter sit-ins would happen in one more year, in August of 1961. [The Martinsville-Henry County Heritage Museum has on display articles in the Martinsville Tribune and the Martinsville Bulletin. Stop by and see them if you are interested.]

1960

A&U Mobile Homes Inc. on Route 220 North advertised as being Virginia’s largest mobile homes dealer. It offered for sale the classic-looking singlewide “The Kentuckian,” with “low down payment; financed up to 7 years” and promised 20 mobile homes on display at its lot. They could be reached at  ME 8-7864 during the day and MU 5-3111 at night.

50 years ago – 1974

Developers Buena Vista Corp. were requesting a special use permit for the construction of a 32-unit townhouse complex on Pine Hall Road.

The 1974 tobacco sale season had opened in Martinsville with prices ranging from $60 to $96 per hundredweight, with the average at $84.32, almost $2 better than the year before and several dollars higher than the opening days of the markets in Georgia and South Carolina.

25 years ago - 1999

Martinsville Sheriff Steve Draper said that horseplay was the reason behind a recent officer shooting, and that officers should never engage in horseplay. On July 19, 1999, city deputies David Floyd and Bobby Branch were suspended from the department for about 20 days following an investigation in which, on July 19, Floyd was shot in the hip outside a Martinsville courtroom, and Branch was charged with misdemeanor of a reckless driving of a firearm. They also were required to become requalified to handle a gun.

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