Jan. 9 through the century, from 2025

1925

The Piedmont Produce Company, ran by Mr. Claude S. Turner, opened in the new building of Turner’s Piedmont Creamery Company on Church Street.

A radio message broadcast from Drake Hotel in Chicago said that hundreds of people were attending the furniture market in that city. From Martinsville that included Rives S. Brown of Virginia Furniture Co., O.D. Ford of American, Clyde Hooker of Bassett and Morgan Simmons of American. Mr. Whitner was scheduled to go on Saturday.

1950

NAACP lawyers defended the Martinsville Seven in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in Richmond. The lawyers contended that the men should have been entitled to a change of venue with jurors from outside the community; that the confessions should not have been entered into evidence; the trials were held so close together [one day after the other] that the defendants were denied due process of law; and that newspaper articles had turned the public against the men.

1961

Martinsville Circuit Court Clerk Jesse D. Clift reported that during 1960 he had issued a total of 146 marriage licenses, categorized as to 93 white and 53 Negro couples.

1975

The Martinsville Branch Library, then called the Martinsville-Henry County Public Library, was having its side porch enclosed and a place prepared for the bookmobile. However, progress was stalled because the contractor was having a hard time finding new bricks to match the old. Across the road at Christ Episcopal Church, the Great Books series started in the basement. Attendees talked about the book “A Primer of Freudian Psychology” in preparation for the discussion “I’m OK, You’re OK.”

2000

The Martinsville City Jail ended up with a large financial responsibility with one of its inmates – it was required to pay the inmate’s $16,800 medical care for AIDS. The City was responsible for that care because the inmate had been arrested and held in jail but not tried, convicted and sentenced.  That was a big chunk of the medical budget for the City Jail, which was $108,000. Sen. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Ridgeway, introduced a budget amendment that would require the state to reimburse localities for the cost of medical care for inmates. Once an inmate was sentenced, his medical care would be paid by the state or federal government – it just fell on the local jails up until the time of conviction. The only other time in memory when big medical bills ran up for any one inmate was in 1995 after a City Farm inmate was run over by a garbage truck.

— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.