The home at 234 West Main Street was built on property that was once part of “Ficklen’s Field”, the large estate of John Fielding Ficklen which consumed the entire block on the north side of West Main Street from Central Boulevard to Randolph Street (you can read more about Ficklen’s Field in the article about the neighboring house at 240 West Main Street and about J.F. Ficklen’s son and heir, Harry C. Ficklen). Sometime during the First World War, possibly around the time of his marriage, Harry Ficklen sold the easternmost portion of his lot to T. Jefferson Rison who built the Craftsman style Bungalow that sits there today.
Thomas Jefferson Rison was born in Danville on the 19th of October 1885 to John Foster Rison and Lillie Dale Penn Rison. The Rison family had a house at 1006 Main Street, demolished in the 70s to make room for the Wednesday Club.
“Jeff” attended public schools in Danville and graduated from the Danville Military Institute before going on to study civil engineering at Purdue University. Mr. Rison worked as a civil engineer for a little while after returning to Danville, but his interests quickly began to follow the development of the automobile. He formed a partnership with Charles K. Carter and opened the Dan Valley Motor company, the first car dealership in Danville.
In 1914, he married Amelia Swift in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Risons were only in their home about three years before they moved to a farm near Jonestown, Mississippi where they ran a large scale farm growing cotton, among other “farm products”.
About 1930, the Risons returned to Danville and where Mr. Rison took work with the Virginia State Highway Department as an engineer. He was not employed in that position many months before he began to be very unwell. He was soon after diagnosed with Leukemia. Ten months later, on the 14th of December 1931, he died. He was 46, and the couple had two daughters. His wife survived him by almost 45 years.
It was Edward Lee Walton who next purchased the house. Mr. Walton was born on the 2nd of December 1873 in Pittsylvania County to Henry Samuel and Harriet Temperance McLaughlin Walton. Mr. Walton was employed as director for the Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association. He married Mamie Jackson Irby in 1899. A little over a year later, they had their first son Edward Lee, Jr., and in 1903 Marvin Irby was born.
The couple lived in the house until 1931, when Mr. and Mrs. Walton moved to Canada.
Marvin became a prominent attorney in Danville. He was fatally injured in a car accident when the car he was riding in overturned after a tire blowout. His wife, who was traveling with him, escaped with only a minor knee injury, despite the car having rolled over. He was 36 years old and left behind three young children.
In 1946, Edward Lee, Jr. suffered a sudden and unexpected heart attack and died at the age 46.
Edward Lee Walton, Sr. died the following year in Halifax, where the family had returned after his retirement.
In 1931, upon the Walton’s move to Canada, the house was purchased by T. Jefferson Bass. Mr. Bass was born March 3rd, 1889 in Danville, the second eldest of six children born to Robert Thomas and Kathryn May Penn Bass.
If some of these names sound familiar, it’s not entirely a coincidence. Thomas Jefferson Rison and Thomas Jefferson Bass were cousins. Their mothers, Lillie Dale Penn (who married John Foster Rison) and Kathryn May Penn (who married Robert Thomas Bass) were sisters who named their sons after their own father, Thomas Jefferson Penn and, like his cousin, was known as “Jeff”. It may, however, be coincidental that they both came to own the house. As for the Waltons, who owned the house in the interim, they were distant cousins of the Bass and Rison families as well. It’s not clear if they knew that or if it had anything to do with the purchasing of it. Danville is and was a small town, after all.
Mr. Bass worked for Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. He married Chatherine Mae Hylton in 1925 (note the similarity between Mr. Bass’s wife’s name and his mother’s, Kathryn May Penn Bass).
Sometime in the early 1940s, Mr. Bass began to suffer from heart trouble that was diagnosed as eventually fatal. His obituary of 28 May 1949 in The Bee describes him as having “adjusted to living to that condition and although thoroughly aware of his plight, he continued” to conduct his business as usual as a life insurance agent. Reporting on his funeral service, the article went on to say that, “Friends spoke of him today as betraying an unfailing courage in the face of his adversity and a stoic outlook toward a physical condition which he recognized as critical for several years.”
The couple had one daughter.
After Mr. Bass’s death, the property became the home of Dr. Prentice Kinzer, Jr. and his family.
Prentice Kinser, Jr. was born on the 13th of February 1906 in Shelbyville, Kentucky, the second of five children born to Prentice Kinser, Sr. and Katie Huffman Kinser.
Dr. Kinser received his Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Kentucky in 1928. He graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School in 1932 and worked for a short time as a general practitioner in West Virginia. From 1932-1934, he served his surgical internship at University of Virginia Hospital and eventually taught at that institution as assistant professor of Orthopedic Surgery.
In May of 1935 he married Gladys Whitten of Charlottesville, Virginia.
In 1940, the couple came to Danville and here he developed a large practice, but the Second World War diverted his attention from his own enterprise to the necessities of field medicine. He Volunteered for the 8th University of Virginia Evacuation Hospital Unit and served as chief orthopedic surgeon as a lieutenant colonel, returning to Danville in 1946.
Dr. Kinser died in June of 1959 while under anesthesia. He had suffered a heart ailment the December previous, and, after many unsuccessful treatments, at last opted for surgery, which seemed to have been a success until his heart gave out. He could not be revived.
His wife continued to live in the house for some years after. Gladys was born on the 1st of November 1909 in Charlottesville, Virginia. She was married again in 1964 to Harry Daniel Faulconer and died in 1985 at the age of 75.
In 1967, the house was purchased by Sue Brown Harrison, widow of Wayles R. Harrison.
Wayles Harrison was a son of James Pinckney and Caroline Rivers Harrison of 644 Jefferson Avenue and whose children owned several Old West End houses. The Harrisons of Danville are descendants of president William Henry Harrison who was briefly the president of the United States from March 4th to April 4th 1841.
Mr. Harrison married Sue Lewis Brown, the daughter of George Akers and Minnie Matthews Brown in 1919. Mrs. Harrison was a school teacher and taught at Robert E. Lee School. Mr. Harrison was president of American National Bank for many years. He passed away on the 29th of May 1949 after a long battle with lung cancer. Mrs. Harrison died in 1992 at the age of 90. The couple had four children.
In 1980, Mrs. Harrison sold the home to Mr. and Mrs. William Watts.
Mr. Watts was born May 9, 1889 in Kentucky, the eldest son of six children born to John Wesley and Ann Helen Noel Watts. He served in World War I and was with the U.S. Army for 13 years, retiring from service as a first sergeant. Mr. Watts arrived in Danville sometime before 1920 (though after 1910). His marriage to Ethel Deboe occurred in Pittsylvania County on the 16th of December 1920. According to his obituary he spent most of his life in Danville and was employed here by Danville Traction & Power Co. the enterprise which operated the city’s cable car line. He died of pneumonia further complicated by COPD on the 5th April 1984. He was 94 years old.
Mrs. Watts was the daughter of Joseph L. Deboe and Sallie Mattox DeBoe of Danville. She died in 1995 and was, like her husband, 94 years of age when she passed away.
In 1991, in preparation to move to Roman Eagle, Mrs. Watts sold the property to Albert and Patricia P. Maurakis who would own it for the next five years.
Albert Maurakis was born on the 28th of June 1917 in Cleveland Ohio to parents who came to the U.S. from the Greek isle of Crete. The family moved to Danville in 1927 where he attended George Washington High School. After graduation, he went to work for his parents who owned a cafe called the Gold Leaf Lunch. He later worked for Dan River Mills and then as an insurance agent. Mr. Maurakis first married Terry Kypriss of Greensboro, North Carolina, and together they had four children. Terry passed away in 1991, and in 2002 Albert married Patricia Brachman, whom he had met while attending Averett University (he was Averett’s oldest graduate when, in 2008, at the age of 89, he was awarded a degree).
In 1996, the house was sold to Anne Myers Banks. Anne was born in Danville. She attended Salem College, and later lived in Greensboro and Raleigh, N.C, before returning to this city. She taught voice lessons and was a lifelong lover of music. Anne married Robert Harriss Banks in 1958. He passed away in 2012.
When Anne died on the 2nd of January 2017, her daughter Anne Coldiron inherited the property. Mrs. Coldiron sold it just a few weeks later to William and Sonya Wentz who owned the house for about three years (they also owned then ,and to this day own, the house next door at 240 West Main Street).
Today the home is owned by Clyde P. Wrenn, III and Luanne Long.
Information provided in this post was derived from the following:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.org
Images and vital information, including biographical sketches found at FindaGrave.com
Danville Historical Society Annual Holiday Walking Tour archives
Death notices and other information found in the Danville Register, Danville Bee and other newspaper archives at Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank.com
Census, Directory, Newspaper, and other information compiled by Paul Liepe
Averett Love Stories: https://www.averett.edu/about-us/news-events/2022-averett-love-stories/
