Oct. 5 through the years
100 Years ago – 1925
Harvey L. Harvey was a workman who did wallpapering, canvas work, decorating and general painting. People needing to reach him would leave a message at the post office or in care of the Henry Bulletin.
75 years ago – 1950
Children’s snowsuits of the newest synthetic fabric, Estron, were for sale at Globman’s for $9.95 ($133 in today’s dollars) for a one-piece zip-up suit and $10.95 ($147 today) for a two-piece (coat and pants).
50 years ago – 1975
The City Transit Company’s West End bus ran increased routes on this Saturday to bring people to and from Charity League’s Bargain Fair, every hour on the half hour.
Nick Prillaman, nicknamed Henry County’s “First Citizen,” died. He was a lumberman, furniture manufacturer, producer of chemicals for furniture and other uses, a mayor of Martinsville and a candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor. He was 84. His education was 4 grades in a one-room schoolhouse and 6 months at National Business College. He never had a chemistry lesson in his life, but he founded Prillaman Co., which later became one of three family-owned paint and chemical companies. He started his company in an old barn in Philpott in 1936, using an open end drum and wooden paddle to produce industrial finishes. He was born in the Prillaman homeplace which is about a mile off Dyers Store Road. He got his money to go to business school by saving during the 2 years he worked at Lester Lumber Co.; then he worked as bookkeeper for Bob Angel’s lumber and construction business. Next he worked for Lester Lumber Co. from 1910-1918. He was given deferred status during World War I because he supported a widowed sister and her three children. Later he formed the county’s third manufacturing furniture plant, Virginia Furniture Co. (the first two were Bassett and American of Martinsville) by buying and converting Hart Lumber Co. He ended up selling that furniture plant to Rives Brown Jr. and started a new furniture plant in Goldsboro, N.C., but that plant failed during the Depression. In 1936 he returned to Henry County where he farmed, milked cows and mixed up furniture finishes which were used by Bassett and American of Martinsville. The barn and the chemical business inside it were destroyed by fire in 1944, so he and his wife, Ruth Moore Prillaman, and children moved to a cinderblock building in Martinsville, where they both lived and worked. In 1955 he incorporated the chemical business and in effect turned it over to his two sons, Hal and Nick Jr. He was involved in creating The Prillaman Chemical Corp. and American Alchemy Corp. He had been a member of the Pythians, Masons, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club and Ruritan Club and First Baptist Church, where a Sunday School class was named in his honor.
25 years ago – 2000
The Spencer Ruritan Club was renovating the Spencer-Penn School, which was built in 1937. Club president Jerry Hylton said the club would like to turn the former school building into a community center – which it is now.
Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, a physician in Washington D.C. and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, said the shooting death of Lisa Thomas appeared to be a hate crime or ritualistic killing, based on the location of the wounds on her body, and he asked police to look at the murder from that perspective.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.