The impressive Queen Anne Style home standing at 912 Main Street was built in 1889 by William Allen Cherry. The property was acquired by his wife from the auction of the estate of John R. Pace. The Pace family occupied the home next door at 904 Main Street from 1870 to 1897.
The property was once part of the estate of Algernon Sidney Buford who built a large home nestled amidst a two-acre grove of oak trees. (One of the last of those oaks fell last summer after a lightning strike killed it.) On the property, beneath the tree, once stood a building used by Mr. Buford for his business affairs. It is on this spot that the Cherry House was built.
Sixteen years later, in 1905, the Cherry family sold their home to J. Pemberton Penn. The Penn name can be ascribed to many of Danville’s finest homes. Like his father, James G. Penn, Pemberton Penn made his name and fortune in tobacco and spent his entire career employed by and later directing the company founded by his father. Pemberton Penn traveled all over the world in his efforts to expand the international business interests of the family enterprise. He eventually relocated to 215 West Main Street.
Sometime before 1920, Spencer James, vice president and general manager of the Piedmont Hardware Company, became the home’s owner and occupant along with his new wife, Ellen Wilson James. The couple were married in 1922, she being 30 years his junior, and had a child together in 1926. Mr. James had been married many years prior, but his wife passed away leaving him a young widower with three children to raise on his own, which he did. Mr. James died in 1927, leaving his new wife, in turn, to the fate of a young widow. It’s unclear whether she remarried, but we do know that that same year, the house was sold.
Mr. Raymond Hall and his wife, Sarah, took occupancy of the house and remained there until 1962. Mr. Hall was a long-time employee and assistant to Harry R. Fitzgerald, president of Dan River Mills.
In 1962, the house became the property of Mr. and Mrs. French Conway who remodeled the home for their own needs and, in doing so, carefully honored the historic nature of their home. New architectural details were added and amended by incorporating salvaged materials from the Rison House that once stood at the site of the present day Wednesday Club at 1002 Main Street.
Now, no longer obscured by the centuries-old oak that once stood there, the grand house stands out as an impressive example of Queen Anne architecture on the Old West End’s Millionaires’ Row.
Sources:
Danville Historical Society’s Annual Holiday Tour 1980
U.S. Census Records
Danville Bee obituaries and death notices found at Newspapers.com
