August 1
100 Years ago – 1924
The office of the Western Union Telegraph Company moved from the Central Drug store to the new quarters in the Hamiliton Martinsville Bakery’s shop on Church street next to the Theater building.
This article on the bottom of the front page of the Henry Bulletin: Headline – “Mrs. Taylor has series accident”; article, “The friends of Mrs. J.R. Taylor will regret to learn that on last Tuesday she had a fall on the stairwell of her home on Brown street, resulting in a badly fractured leg. She was taken at once to Shackelford Hospital for surgical attention and today is reported to be getting on as well as could be expected.
75 years ago – 1949
Charles H. Davis Jr. of Martinsille was awarded a fellowship at Yale University for the 1949-50 school year. The fellowship provided a fellowship of $1,400 to enable Davis to engage in a full academic year of graduate study in traffic engineering. He at the time was working on a survey of Martinsville traffic for the State Highway department.
1960
People rode buses from the Greyhound bus station on Church Street. On Aug. 1, 27 local boys, their parents and six adult leaders were at the bus station between 5 and 6 in the morning to board a chartered bus to Canada for a Boy Scout canoe trip. They rode a double-deck air-conditioned Scenicruiser to the take-off point at Ely, Minnesota. The Boy Scouts were Jim Brammer, Jerry Purcell, John Gregory, A.D. Hopkins Jr., Jeff Hankins, Neil Stultz, James E. Johnson, Andy Geoghegan, Bobby Pyles, Chip and Robert Lackey, Buster Kitchel, John Rist, Peter Cleal, Gerald Martin, Ronnie Cannaday, Bruce Bassart, Joe Ravenel, Billy Nease, C. Lee Lester, Danny Critz, Rusty Hodnett, Donald Thomasson, Gary Pace, David Jones and Earnie Williams.
50 years ago – 1974
In a project funded mostly by the Virginia State Library, “loose papers” at the Henry County Circuit Court Clerk’s office were being researched, microfilmed, filed and indexed. The people working on that project were discovering that many famous names had signed documents that were housed in Henry County, including Gov. Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, Benjamin Harrison, William B. Giles and John Floyd (the last two had counties named after them).
25 years ago - 1999
The family of the late Teresa Hairston of 32 Bethel Lane Extension experienced a shock as they were gathered to mourn her passing. During a bad storm, a popular tree fell onto the back of the house, and the roof caved in. The tree first struck the room where Hairston’s mother was sitting with relatives Tyroshelle Hairston and Olga Hairston. Then it hit the dining room, where the family’s pastor, Mark Price Sr., of Greater New Bethel Apostolic Church, was eating.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.