The home at 230 Jefferson Avenue was built for Julius Allen Patton in 1886. Mr. Patton was the youngest son of William S. Patton and Catherine Apphia Ross (pictured below). The pair were Danville’s early power couple, both having come from founding Danville families. Catherine inherited her wealth from her uncle, Robert Ross, and William S. Patton’s family owned several acres of land on Jefferson Avenue which were, after the death of William Patton, divided and sold off by his heirs.
On one of these lots, J. Allen built his home. Allen, who was born in 1857, was a partner in his father’s banking firm of W.S. Patton Sons & Company. In his later years he served as Danville’s City Treasurer until illness forced his retirement. He married Mary Henry “Hennie” Crew of Richmond in 1882, and the couple had three children. After Allen died in 1891 of consumption, his wife stayed on and raised their children who were all under the age of ten. Hennie remained in the home until 1919 when she sold it to Morris Halperin. A year later it was the property of Howard Dickerson, a superintendent in a lumber mill, his wife Lena and their sixteen year old son Ben. It was about this time that the property was divided into two units. According to C.B. Maddox, whose parents lived in the house for many years, and who owns the house today, the porch on the Patton Street side of the house was enlarged and was made into two stories so that the interior stairway could be reconfigured to enter onto the second story of the side porch. The upstairs window was converted into a front door, thus creating upstairs and downstairs apartments. While the downstairs remained the home of the Dickersons, the upstairs unit was sold as an independent parcel of real estate. It was purchased by John Bullock Crews II and his wife Lillie.
John Bullock Crews II was the half brother of Beverly Sydnor Crews, for whom the house at 806 Main Street was built. A native of Halifax County, John Bullock Crews II was born in 1875. He spent his childhood in Chatham before moving to Danville where he first worked firstly for Averett’s Shoe Store before striking out on his own in the wholesale grocery and coffee business. A ledger desk from that era remains in the home today. Eventually, Mr. Crews entered into the tobacco trade working for the American Tobacco Company and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for whom he travelled extensively. Mr. Crews passed away in 1938 at the age of 63. His wife remained in the home for the next forty-five years.
James Howard Dickerson was born in 1871 in Charlotte County, the son of James T. and Martha Burton Dickerson. At the age of 16 he arrived in Danville where he started out as a private contractor before taking a position with the Danville Lumber Company for whom he worked for three and a half decades, serving in the capacity of superintendent since its reorganization in 1901. According to his obituary, Mr. Dickerson was well known for his “accurate knowledge of lumber and mill work and he enjoyed also noted ability as a designer.” Mr. Dickerson was well known as someone who had a deep fondness for animals. Birds, especially, benefitted by his notice, and he was known by his neighbors to make it a practice to feed them twice daily.
In 1893, Mr. Dickerson married Miss Lena Hughes, who shared the Jefferson Avenue home with him until her death in 1920. The couple had three children, Mabel, Eunice, and James, the youngest, who was eighteen at the time of his mother’s death. In 1924, he married Delphia Herndon.
Mr. Dickerson died in 1938 of pneumonia, leaving his portion of the house to his daughter Mabel and her husband Russell Aubrey Keck.
Mr. Keck was born in Danville in 1899 to William Franz “Frank” Keck of Manheim Germany, who had immigrated to the United States in the 1880s, and Selena Misell Keck, a native of Virginia whose own family had come from Germany as well. The couple had seven children, six of whom were sons and inclined to getting into mischief by all accounts. A newspaper article published in 1908 related the story of how Russel, just nine, and his brothers, William “Nelson” (16), Herbert (11) and Harold (4) were playing with a cigar box filled with gun powder when it exploded, injuring the boys. It was not the last time one of the Keck men would appear in the paper.
Russell Keck married Mabel in 1924. He worked for the Imperial Tobacco Company as a bookkeeper, a job he started in 1922. The couple had four children Jean Carol (1925), Russell Jr. (1930), Patricia (1931), and James William (1933).
The 1930’s were apparently a tumultuous time for the Keck family. The trouble seems to have begun with the death of Russell’s mother, Selena, in 1929, after a sudden and unsuccessful operation to treat an intestinal obstruction. Just eighteen months later, Frank (63) was arrested when a gun he was holding went off, wounding his 22 year old companion Eliza Huey. Frank insisted the shooting was an accident, but when asked to give his side of the story, he refused to do it.
According to Eliza, Frank had been visiting her in her hotel room where she was staying while visiting Danville from her home in Toccoa, Georgia. At some point, their conversation, in which he made certain “representations” to her, resulted in an argument, and angry words were exchanged. Frank left the hotel but returned the following morning, entering the hotel room while Eliza was in the bathroom. “When she emerged … he renewed his representations to her, jerked her through the bathroom door and then drew a revolver from his pocket and fired one shot. The bullet entered above the pubic bone and ranging downward inflicted a flesh wound.” Eliza ran into the bathroom and locked herself in, while Frank fled. Other guests of the hotel, having heard the shot, entered her hotel room to make sure she was not injured, and, seeing that she had indeed been shot, Dr. C.W. Pritchett was sent for and police went in search of Keck who, in the interim, had decided to turn himself in.
According to Eliza, she had met Mr. Keck the previous May when she had arranged to purchase a watch from him. She had stayed with him in his home for a period of two weeks following that first meeting. The two had become friends, she told police, but Mr. Keck, it seemed, wanted something more from her than friendship, which she refused to give. Mr. Keck’s version of events was that he was simply trying to “reform” Eliza who had run away from home and whose company he had paid for on more occasions than one. This rationale, his attorney felt (and his friends were happy to second the notion) seemed to suggest that Frank had, at least temporarily, lost his sense.
In the weeks following the incident, Eliza was kept in confinement at the City Hall owing to the fact that she had not the funds to provide the bond payment for her appearance at court, nor to remain a guest at the hotel. In the meantime, the police wanted to keep her around for questioning, and to stand as a witness when the matter came to court. Meanwhile, Frank was turned over to the mental health institution in Marion, Virginia for evaluation. A month after the incident, Frank and Eliza were still confined in their respective detention cells. When Eliza was at last released, she returned to Georgia and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Frank remained in Marion until March of 1934 when he was released after being “restored to sanity”.
Frank returned to his home on Loyal Street and resumed his occupation as barber.
Meanwhile, back on Jefferson Avenue, Russell and Mabel appear to have had peace within their home, even if there was chaos outside of it. While Russell worked dutifully as a bookkeeper, Mabel had her own venture running the Five Forks Soda Shop around the corner on Jefferson Street alongside her cousin, Eunice “Till” Marchand. Russell died of lung cancer in 1961, and Mabel continued to live in the Jefferson Avenue home while her cousin, with whom she was very close, resided in an upstairs apartment. On February 28, 1984, Mabel’s daughter, Patricia died of lung cancer. Not a month later, Mabel passed away of congestive heart failure—or, as the family believes to this day, of a broken heart. She was 85 at the time of her death and had lived at 230 Jefferson Avenue for nearly 65 years.
After the death of Mrs. Keck, Mrs. Crews purchased the other half of the property, returning the house to single family ownership. Lillie Crews survived Mabel by four years, passing away in 1988 and ending that family’s sojourn in the home of nearly 70 years.
In 1991, the house was acquired by Coleman Maddox, Sr., and his wife Martha who occupied the upstairs apartment. The downstairs quarters were refurbished by their son, C.B. Maddox and Bill Wellbank. It is they who own the house now.
Sources:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.org
Images and vital information, including biographical sketches 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
Rebecca Wright, granddaughter of Russell and Mabel Keck
