This home is one of several built around 1900 on the rear portion of lots once belonging to Mary Edmunds Robinson Crumpton (838 Green Street) and J.R. and E.O. McCully. The house at 835 Pine Street was acquired by a group of investors in 1896 who purchased the lot at auction when the McCully brothers ran into some financial trouble and needed to secure the money for a debt. Two years later the property was sold to Dr. George Sumter.
Dr. George was born in Fauquier county, Virginia in 1862 to Weeden Starke and Mary Catherine Payne George. He studied medicine at the University of the City of New York and graduated with a medical degree in 1886. In 1898 he purchased the Pine Street home. It’s uncertain he ever lived there, however. He purchased the house as an unmarried man. In 1910, he married Mary Elizabeth Farish and by 1920 was living a brick building at 520 Main Street in which he had set up his practice. In 1918 he sold the house to P.W. Ashworth, at which time Mr. George moved to Caswell County.
As early as 1900 the property of was home to jeweler John J. Speer. Speer was president of the State Jewelers’ Association in 1928. Local papers of the time reported that there were more than 50 jewelers in the city of Danville alone and that Speer himself, who spoke at a State Association gala in 1928, was “enthused over the cooperative attitude of the business competitors linked together in a single organization.”
By 1910, it was a blacksmith and horse shoer Angus Ross and his wife, Willie, who lived here. Angus arrived in Danville from Scotland around 1890 and was known in Danville for his superior workmanship. He was a popular character among the people of the Old West End and downtown Danville, and his services were in high demand prior to the arrival of the automobile.
Subsequent residents included Harry W. Scearce and his wife Lelia who both worked in the cotton mills, George Cabble Belton, a machinist who was active in the National Guard and was given the responsibility of maintaining the Danville Gray’s “large gun” which was housed in the armory, where he was, for a time, a clerk in the 1920’s. He resided at 835 Pine Street in the late 30’s and early 40’s and maintained his activity with the National Guard up until the early to mid 1960’s.
Sources:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.org
Death notices and other information found in the Danville Register, Danville Bee archives at Newspapers.com
Census, Directory, Newspaper, and other information compiled by Paul Liepe
