February 2 through the years
100 Years ago – 1926
Mr. W.E. Gardner of Danville, a director of the Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association, spoke for more than 2 hours to an audience of 200 Henry County tobacco growers at the courthouse. Among his topics was the re-drying of tobacco: “Whenever a hogshead of re-dryed tobacco is sampled and found to have been burned or to have been put up before thoroughly dried, then the association charges back to the re-dryer, the tobacco at the sales price of the association. Therefore all tobacco which the association has redried was insured from loss to the association.”
75 years ago – 1951
Five executions were carried out across a total elapsed time of 1 hour and 25 minutes. Four of them were of the Martinsville Seven, accused of the assault and rape of a white woman in Martinsville. They died in this order: Joey Henry Hampton, 22; Howard Lee Hairston, 21; Booker T. Millner, 22, and Frank Hairston Jr., 21, all in the electric chair. Before they were electrocuted, though, George Thomas Hailey, 27, who had been sentenced for murder in the rape slaying of a 14-year-old girl. Local people who were official witnesses to the executions were: Paul Shorter of Martinsville, for George Hailey; for John Henry Hampton, J.C. Stone, Paul N. Stone, W.H. Robinson, Andy Joyce, Carl M. Stone, E.W. Reynolds, R.W. Snyder and W.H. Hatcher, all of Martinsville; for Frank Hairston Jr.: Arto Hailey of Bassett and Aaron Blair, Wilbur Edwards, E.B. Frazier and Dr. M.E. Mease of Sandy Level; for Howard Lee Hairston, H.C. Bradshaw and E.H. Williams of Ridgeway; and for Booker T. Millner, Posey F. Cooper of Rocky Mount. Two ambulances from a Martinsville funeral home had left Martinsville at 1:15 a.m. to drive to Richmond to bring the bodies back home. Frank Hairston, the last to be electrocuted, was the 49th black person to die in the same electric chair for rape since the chair was installed in 1908. No white man had been executed for rape in Virginia since 1908. Meanwhile, there were no demonstrations at or near the state penitentiary at 500 Spring Street in Richmond. Hundreds of sympathizers for the Martinsville Seven had been in Richmond the week before, but they were not in evidence. The few scattered groups outside melted away. The only people noted to be around were the five 12-man panels of witnesses, five newspapermen in the prison lobby and half a dozen police cars cruising outside. A prayer vigil was held in Capitol Square downtown.
50 years ago – 1976
Henry County was having difficulty covering the trash in its landfill with dirt. There simply wasn’t enough dirt to do the job, and as the dump had filled up, landfill workers had to bring dirt from more than 100 yards away to the center of the landfill to cover the trash, which was hard on the equipment. County supervisors were visiting the landfills in Danville and Pittsylvania County to see how the matter was handled there. What was interesting about the Pittsylvania County landfill was that a trench was cut to fill with trash, and then topped with dirt.
25 years ago - 2001
The Henry County Board of Supervisors had directed County Administrator Sid Clower to develop some kind of economic development authority. Clower pointed out that though he had not yet written a job description for a county economic developer, for the past 5 years the county had been paying consultant Mary Rae Carter $60,000 to act as a liaison with state and federal governments.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.