The Pascucci House, 215 Jefferson Ave

🔊 Hear The Story

Though the city of Danville’s public records assign the build date of the Craftsman style home at 215 Jefferson Avenue as 1920, it’s not entirely clear when this structure was built. In 1879, V.J. Clutter sold the empty lot to P.L,. Rendleman, probably as a portion of a larger property. Mr. Rendleman died in 1888 and it was his wife, Georgette, who conveyed the property In 1911 to their son, Charles I. Myers of Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1913 Charles sold the property to L.V Burton, and in 1921, Mr. Burton sold “the southwest portion of the lot” to Christine Pascucci of 428 Wilson Street, and it may have been around this time that the home was built.

Mr. and Mrs. Pascucci were both immigrants from Italy. Pasquale Pascucci was born in Naples and settled in Wilmington, North Carolina prior to his marriage in 1872. Christine arrived in Danville some time earlier. The couple met, and Mr. Pascucci came to Danville in order to marry his bride. Here he set up a fruit and confectionary business. The couple had eight children. In 1922, they lost a son, Joseph, to cerebral meningitis heralding in a period of difficulty for the family.

Mr. Pascucci passed away in 1925 after suffering a stroke. In 1933, the couple’s youngest daughter, Louise, was found dead in the home of Robert A. Eames who operated a grocery store adjacent to his home on College Avenue. Louise, 42, was shot twice by Eames, but no motive was ever discovered. A year later, her husband suffered a heart attack in his sleep and died.

In January of 1936, Mrs. Pascucci fell in her home and broke her hip. She died soon after. Just four months later, another daughter, Rosa, a widow, died of heart disease at the age of 59.

Prior to her death, in 1923, Christine transferred ownership of the Jefferson Avenue home to her daughter, Mamie. Mamie died in 1954, and there followed a chancery suit over the house in order to collect funds to pay a debt of $7,500. The house was purchased by Frances P. Meador, the youngest surviving child of the Pascucci family who maintained the property until 1974 when it was conveyed to the granddaughter of Frances and her (Frances’s) husband Eugene.

Mary Elizabeth Meador Tate was born in 1945 in Danville and raised by her stepfather, Gus Wiles, and mother, Sarah Christine Wiles.” Mary worked for Columbia Forest Products. She married Edward Mason Tate in 1970 and had one daughter.

Though the Pascucci family owned the property for nearly 65 years, it seems the home was mainly retained for the purpose of rental income.

The first person to have lived in the house, appears to have been an F.A. McGee in 1927. In 1930, the house was the home of Charles Cashway, a manager in a department store who shared the home with his wife, daughter, and one servant.

By 1940, two of the Pascucci sisters were living in the house, Mamie White and Isabelle Doughty. After Mamie’s death, Frances Meador, having acquired the property in 1955, resided in the home.

In 1985, the house left the Pascucci family’s hands for what was conceivably the first time and was purchased by Abbot, New & Dillon Realty who maintained the home for the next nine years, presumably as rental property. From 1994 until 2004, it was the home of John E. Hall, III.

Over the decade that followed it changed hands several more times until the Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority acquired it. Today it is owned by Block One Properties and has recently been refurbished to its present condition.

Sources:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.org
Images and vital information, including biographical sketches and family photos found at FindaGrave.com
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