For the past two weeks, we have been visiting the Goblintown community. This week, we will venture a couple of miles over into the little mining town known as Fayerdale. Jack Williamson has done a wonderful job writing about the history of the Goblintown Grist Mill and the Fayerdale Iron Works and his information is easily accessible on the Internet. I recently came across a much lesser-known source of information on the town of Fayerdale in the form of a man named Horace Brown.
Horace Garland Brown was born in Pulaski, Tennessee on the 27th of July 1879. Horace was one of eleven children born to Salem, Virginia natives, dry goods merchant Joshua Callaway Brown and his wife, Mary Jane Williams Brown. In the 1900 census, Horace Brown is listed as a bookkeeper for a coal company in Roanoke. I will let Brown pick up the story from here, “I first went to Fayerdale in 1906. I was sent there by the Virginia Ore and Lumber Company as the company’s storekeeper and payroll clerk. I had some experience in the coal mines of Welch, West Virginia and they picked me out for the job because the company was mining ore in Fayerdale.”
In a Martinsville Bulletin interview with Brown in October 1948, Brown stated that Fayerdale was named by Mrs. Frank A. Hill, the wife of geological expert, president of the Red Jacket Coal Company, and the Virginia Ore and Lumber Company. Mrs. Hill had taken the “F” of her husband’s first name, combined it with his middle name “Ayer” and added “Dale” in honor of Hill’s business partner, Dale Lafferty.
Brown wrote that when he was first sent to Fayerdale, the mining company was set up with a $300,000 investment of capital stock and the land known as the Sam Hairston tract was purchased for $54,000. The adjoining acreage was known as the Watt Hairston tract and was managed by Ben Townes, who also managed Watt Hairston’s 25,000 acres of cotton land in Mississippi.
When Brown first came to Fayerdale, the company told him that, on account of the low wages paid to the ore mine employees, they expected him to sell to them at only a small profit. Brown stated that, “On one occasion, I was invited to a home that did not even have a wood cookstove. The skillets were put directly into the fireplace. I did not wonder long at this lack of modernity as the people were hospitable and friendly and though education was limited, they possessed a native wit.”
Brown wrote that in 1907, Mr. and Mrs. C. V. Ferguson took over the operation of the Fayerdale Hotel, which was” well-run and well patronized.” Charles Hagood was the hotel waiter and stable boss, and his wife Maggie was the hotel cook. I looked in the 1910 census, and Charles Hagood and Maggie Turner were listed as working and living at the Fayerdale Hotel along with Charles and Daisy Ferguson and their two sons, George and Robert Ferguson. A marriage record from December 29th, 1912, is recorded in the Henry County Circuit Court Clerk’s office for Maggie Turner, daughter of Henry and Nancy Turner and Charles Hagood (Hagwood), the son of Ben and Eliza Hagood.
On the fifth of June 1907, Horace G. Brown married a local Elamsville girl, Miss Minnie Maude Hooker, the daughter of William Crawford Hooker and Mary Alice Ross Hooker. The couple would go on to have two children born in Fayerdale, William Calloway Brown, born in 1908 and Catherine Langhorne Brown, born in 1910.
Fayerdale was a booming little community, Brown recalls, “the first project of the mining company was to build a 12 mile stretch of standard gauge railroad from Philpott to Fayerdale.” The cost of the grading alone was $120,000, not to mention the two iron bridges and numerous wooden bridges, the rails, the passenger and freight cars, the locomotive purchased from Norfolk & Western, and the turntable to make the trip back to Philpott.
Brown recalls, “the company cut lumber to make cross-ties for the railroad. Later, the sale of tan bark and pulpwood became a profitable business.” Brown and his family lived next door to Dr. Albert Lancaster, the mining company doctor. Within a short time of Brown coming to Fayerdale, there were over 400 men on the company payroll and “the lumber division and railroad construction had been let out to private contract and their joint payrolls ran to around 1,200 men.”
The Fayerdale Schoolhouse was made of rock and the teacher was Miss Della Wood, later known as Mrs. Della Wood Harger, the daughter of Daniel Hillsman Wood and Malinda Ruth Corn Wood. Sunday School and church services were conducted at the school every week by Reverend Alexander Bryant. Reverend Bryant’s son, H.O. Bryant was the station agent at Fayerdale and P. T. Setliff was mine foreman.
When the mining operation ceased in 1910-1911, Brown went to work managing his father in law’s store in Elamsville; Brown was also working out of the store as the local postmaster. Brown recalled, “at Elamsville, we did a thriving business, so did I. M. Akers at Buffalo Ridge and W. G. Atkins at Woolwine. We handled poultry, butter, eggs, chestnuts, dried fruits, and walnut kernels. At times, the inventories were so heavy, it was necessary for all three of our stores to put props under the second story floor to keep the floor from caving in.”
Brown recalled what happened next, “the roads at times were so bad that we couldn’t get out of our areas to trade off the merchandise that we had accumulated from our suppliers. This often caused us to suffer losses, particularly in perishable goods. The merchants met to work for better county roads to get our produce out for shipment to Roanoke and Martinsville. Model-T Fords were just coming into favor, and it took seven gallons of gasoline just to travel up and over Bull Mountain.”
“We soon learned the county did not have money to build such a road, so the local merchants lent the county money (without interest) to build a road from Elamsville at Marsh Stone’s place to the Henry County line. Credit for obtaining the right of way is due to W. C. Hooker; Jeff Ross; Elkanah Lackey; Daniel Hillsman; John T. Wood; Ben Mays; and Tump Spangler. If someone didn’t have money, they lent their teams; later J. D. Bassett and E. J. Davis, a Martinsville tobacconist helped as they were anxious to trade with us.”
According to Brown, the building of the new road did not benefit the Patrick County merchants as planned, “the intentions of us poor Patrick Countians were good. We had figured that the road would enable us to truck our freight to and from Martinsville, but we had overlooked one thing. The people from whom we had been buying and to whom we had been selling took advantage of the road and delivered their produce in person to the larger trading centers. They said they could get higher prices in Bassett and Martinsville and had a wider assortment of things to choose from to bring home. This reduced our big businesses to slim pickings.”
Brown eventually moved his young family to Martinsville and would work in a variety of service professions. After he left his father in law’s country store in Elamsville, he worked as a caterer on Pullman and private cars on the Norfolk & Western Railway, then served as the store manager of Martinsville’s Montgomery Ward Catalog Store for twelve years. When WWII broke out, he served the War Department as the PX Manager at Fort Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia. After the war, he returned to Martinsville and worked as the concessions manager at Forest Park Country Club.
Horace G. Brown passed away in 1957 at the age of 77 and his wife, Minnie Hooker Brown, passed away in 1970 at the age of 86; they are buried at Roselawn in Martinsville. Next week, we will look at Minnie’s parents, William Crawford Hooker and Mary Ellen Ross and their families. Thank you so much to Katherine Hooker Boaz for sharing these wonderful photographs. Woody may be reached at rockcastlecreek1@gmail.com or (276) 692-9626.
