100 Years ago – May 1926
Mr. A.D. Witten was the chair of the newly formed Martinsville Golf and Country Club, which had a clubhouse. About 70 members had signed up so far. Six of them had offered to guarantee the signatures of the balance that was necessary to complete the organization’s roster: M.S. Schottland, N.S. Schottland, H.A. Ford, A.D. Witten, J.C. Hooker and R.S. Brown. The land committee (S.S. Stephens, J.C. Hooker and H.A. Ford) was instructed to get the golf course put into temporary shape so that playing could begin immediately. They were given $100 ($1,820 today) to do that. Mr. Ford was put in charge of finding a hostess for the clubhouse. J.D. Sparrow was put in charge of getting telephone connection to the city line.
Twenty-six members of Stuart Hairston Camp of Confederate Veterans met at the Municipal Building. Several applications for pensions were approved. Elected as officers were Capt. O.M. Allen, Dr. W.W. Mooris, George F. Trent, John T. Morris, Rev. J.P. McCabe, A.T. Jones. The Mildred Lee Chapter Daughters of the Confederacy served the lunch. The veterans at the meeting had an average age of 82 years. They were estimated to be among the youngest of the 75 Confederate veterans still alive in Henry County.
Homer Carter, a farmer of the Mill Creek section of Franklin County, died at Shackelford Hospital as a result of injuries sustained in a fall from an aeroplane. The plane was owned and was being propelled by Alonzo Martin, also of Mill Creek. Carter
A $150,000 bond issue was proposed for the construction of schools. The county school board already owned land in Reed Creek, Axton and Ridgeway, which had schools there. Schools were proposed for: Spencer, on 5 acres donated by Mrs. M.S. Buchanan; Bassett, on 2 acres which Mr. W.M. Bassett of the J.D. Bassett Manufacturing Co. had agreed to give, for a school in North Bassett; a four-room school for children in South Bassett and Firestone on 2 ½ acres, north of B.T. Prillaman’s store on the Old Carolina Road; in Bassett, adjoining the Bassett high school, with land Bassett citizens were expected to donate; Sanville, on land donated by Mrs. John Fretwell, near Blackberry Church; and Martinsville, on the English and Teague properties, which had been surveyed by Mr. Moore.
The local Company H, Virginia National Guard, staged a smoker and a boxing program in the Company’s Armory in the Walton-Shumate Building near the Norfolk and Western station. Three boxing exhibitions were staged. Company H held drills every Thursday evening from 7:30-9 p.m. and social activities and programs every few weeks.
Miss Martha Whitfield of Atlanta addressed the members of the Axton Home Demonstration Club in the Home Economics Department of Axton High School at 2:3 p.m.
Miss Martha Whitfield of Atlanta gave a Salad Demonstration in the Home Economics Department of the Martinsville High School at 11 a.m. A few days later, she gave her Salad Demonstration to the Horsepasture Home Demonstration Club.
A meeting was held about the fine new service station being built in Ridgeway by the O.D. Ford Motor Company. It was to be the prettiest and finest service station in the region, built on the Public Square at the intersection of the two main streets. Construction had started several weeks back, but the highway department put a stop to it, claiming that the corner was a narrow one, and travel would be even more perilous with a building there. “But it was understood that as the citizens of that community desired to see a high class building go up at that corner,” the Henry Bulletin of May 14, 1926, stated, “the owners of land facing the property have agreed to give so many feet of the front property, in order to widen the corner from each direction.”
The Martinsville chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Club hosted that club’s State Convention.
The Red Cross Clinic for the Crippled was held from 1:30-4:30 p.m. in the Martinsville Grammar School. Dr. Wescott provided examinations and changed plaster casts.
The Axton 4-H Club presented a Tom Thumb Wedding in the evening, at Axton High School It was a fundraiser to help pay expenses for the club’s trip to the State Short Course in Blacksburg.
The prizes and winners of the Bulletin’s subscription contest were: walnut bedroom suite by Virginia Furniture Co., valued at $300, Mrs. E.L. Turner, Miss Emma Shumate and Mrs. J.D. Burgess; a walnut dining room set by Virginia Furniture Co., valued at $350, Mrs. Jones Allen, Mrs. Pete Stultz and Mrs. Muncie Hurd; a mahogany Columbia phonograph from C.P. Kearfott & Son, $175 value, Mrs. G.E. Turner, Mrs. J.G. Fulcher and Mrs. J.D. Burgess; Boy Scout bicycle worth $50, from Millners Variety Store, Charles A. Womack; and a ladies solid gold wrist watch, valued at $40, by Mrs. L.R. Tatum, Miss Lucy Davis, Miss Virgie Warren, Miss Jennie Hundley, Miss Elsie Shumate, Mrs. Ernest Turner and Miss Mary Woody.
The Retail Merchants Association held an Institute, also called a School of Instruction in Salesmanship, conducted by Mr. Stockton. It was a series of meetings of merchants, their sales people and customers. The first session was “Fussy Customers and Snippy Clerks.” Other sessions included “Today’s Competition – and How to Meet It,” “Open for Business” and “Bugs in Business.”
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.