Martinsville a Pictorial History

Foreward

This book is a chronicle of Martinsville as it has been passed down to us by the history makers:

the photographers such as Ennis Bros. Studio, Kelso Studio, Ewing Studio, Vista Studio, Ronald Gill's Studio, and the amateur photographer with his Kodak Brownie
the journalists who have noted the sale of a business, the completion of a building, the purchase of a fire truck
the historians who have jotted down memoirs, created high school yearbooks, and preserved city records
the authors who have crafted novels, poems and essays about our people
the librarians who have compiled research files full of news clippings, photographs, high school essays, company brochures
the living who have held their memories and enthusiastically shared them when asked.

     As the author of this book I am merely the channel through which the history of Martinsville flows to the reader. The history as I have recast it here is based on all of the above sources. Because I am not a historian but a folklorist, I am concerned with bringing everyday life of the past into focus. It does not satisfy me to shape our history as name and dates, because history as Jerry Caywood wrote so well in a 1991 Reporter article, is most rewarding when it is about feeling. The chief responsibility of the historian should be to explore what events, places, people, and so on have meant in the past, and what they continue to mean.
     My second concern as a folklorist, and one that is frequently now being adopted by the historian, is that all people deserve a place in the history books. I have deliberately placed women and children, as well as the working class and our well-loved African Americans, on the pages of this book because Martinsville wasn't built only by the factory and sanitarium owners, the doctors, and the lawyers. The people who worked for them, the people who built the simple houses, owned the grocery stores and saloons and filled the churches and schools -- these people also built Martinsville.
     My last concern is that history all too often is constructed from what remains of the past, from what is remembered. Because this is a pictorial history, it was necessarily shaped by what photographs and other visual images could be found. This means a great many things were regretfully omitted, although pains have been taken to include what has been traditionally considered most significant in our past. Alongside them, however, are people, places, and events that were, as one of my consultants believes, "not really all that important."
     Furthermore, I have chosen to confine this history to the years prior to 1970--chiefly because space was limited but also because 25 years seems to be a good cutting off point. Twenty-five years is a single generation, and the occurrences of a quarter century ago are well within the memory of most of us, and quite easy to retrieve from the variety of sources that are now available.
     History is not objective and it is not prepackaged importance. History is what we choose to remember of our past. In this book it is babies and baptisms, school lunch, the Boy's Club, hamburgers at the Black and White, Gano's Flowers, a new Coke machine at the high school.

It is the history of Martinsville.

Web pages by Lee Hirt.