John Lyle Hagan was born in Christiansburg, Virginia in 1860, the fourth of ten children of William Caruthers Hagan and Margaret Jane Smith Hagan. Mr. Hagan arrived in Danville in 1881 to accept a position with Pleasant R. Jones who operated a drug store downtown. Hagan later opened his own store in partnership with J.T. Watson, Jr. at 260 Jefferson.
John married Mary Carland Gray of Rhode Island in December of 1890. The couple resided in a second-floor apartment above the drug store. Just five months after they were wed, however, tragedy struck. The couple had gone out for an early morning drive down South Main Street. At about the point of the Dry Bridge (now the train underpass) Mr. Hagan’s hat blew off, and he made a sudden attempt to catch it. In doing so, his horse spooked, jolting the cart so that he fell. Mrs. Hagan screamed, frightening the animal further, and the horse bolted and took off at a run. Despite the efforts of several passersby to stop it, the horse dashed onward until the dog cart was turned over and Mrs. Hagan, too, was thrown to the ground. She was taken home and a doctor sent for, but when it was determined that her skull had been crushed, Mr. Hagan was warned to prepare for the end. By 2:30 in the afternoon, she was gone.
Mr. Hagan remarried in 1905. His second wife, Jane Moore Gray Hagan (no known relation to the first Mrs. Hagan) was fourteen years his junior. She was a well-educated woman with a love of books and a desire to bring the improving occupation of reading to the community at large through a free library. It was owing to her that the city’s first library was established in an addition built onto what was then known as the “Memorial Mansion,” presently the Danville Museum of Fine Art and History. She served as Danville’s first librarian from 1910 until her retirement in 1947. She was also a founding member of the Wednesday Club. During her retirement she wrote and published the highly regarded book, The Story of Danville, now out of print.
In 1923, Mr. and Mrs. Hagan moved from above the store to a home they had leased at the corner of Chestnut and Pine Streets on the west side of the First Baptist Church (since razed to provide for parking). By 1927, failing health forced Mr. Hagan to retire from his long career as a druggist, and his nephew, Hagan Eastland arrived from Kansas to take over the business. Within a year of his retirement, paralysis left Mr. Hagan an invalid, and he spent the last two years of his life in Memorial Hospital, passing away in September of 1930, just two months shy of his 70th birthday. His remains were taken to Christiansburg where he was buried in a family plot in the Sunset Cemetery. Mrs. Hagan survived her husband by 26 years and passed away in 1956 after an extended battle with breast cancer.
This post was written largely by information collected by Paul Liepe regarding the residents of Jefferson Avenue.
Information was also gathered from death notices found at Newspapers.com and birth, death, and vital records found at Familysearch.org.
