What happened on Oct. 16 through the years

100 Years ago – 1925

 A Red Cross Clinic for “those handicapped by accident, disease of otherwise” was held from 2-5 p.m. at the Martinsville Grammar School.

75 years ago – 1950

An estimate $51 per hundred pounds was the price paid to farmers, who sold a combined 250,000 pounds of tobacco on the Martinsville market. Some piles of tobacco sold for as high as $69 per 100 pounds.

Only two local people registered at the courthouse for the medical draft. They were Dr. J.C. Commander, a black doctor in Martinsville, and Dr. Clyde V. Stanley, a white doctor in the Stanleytown-Bassett area. The registration for medical men under 50, who received training at government expense and did not serve in the armed forces for at least 21 months during World War II, was nationwide. All dentists and veterinarians in the county and city appeared to be exempt.

50 years ago – 1975

State Sen. Virgil H. Goode Jr. and Wilbur S. Doyle, candidate for State Senate spoke to the Martinsville Exchange Club. Goode said he was in favor of legislation to allow firemen, policemen and teachers the right to public employee bargaining but not the right to strike. Doye said he opposed collective bargaining powers for public employees.

National School Lunch Day took on a revolutionary theme at Joseph Martin School. Teachers and students wore colonial-style garments to celebrate the bicentennial.

25 years ago - 2000

At least 150 people from Martinsville and Henry County were taking part in the Million Family March in Washington D.C. They went there on two buses which let from the corner of Fayette and Spencer streets. The trip was sponsored by the Rev. Kenneth Muhammad of Nation of Islam. Ronald X, the owner of Reel Shop, and electronics repair shop on Fayette Street, said that at the march Abdul Alim Muhammad told the crowd that Thomas lost her live because of a letter to the editor she had written which had been published in the Martinsville Bulletin. That letter gave information about the Million Family March. She was shot to death four days later, on Sept. 26. Muhammad had said that her murder was a hate crime.

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