It’s unclear when the home at 931 Green Street was constructed, but early records suggest a home was standing there when the property, part of the Nathanial T. Green estate, was sold in 1864. It was sold to William S. and George C. Ayers at the whopping price of $8,000, an amount that reflected wartime inflation. It’s unclear that either brother ever lived in the house. In the 1880 census, George was already living on Main Street, and William, the city’s treasurer, was living on Pine Street. In 1884, the Ayers brothers sold the property at auction to Matilda Meyers who likely maintained the property for rental investment purposes.

The first known occupant was William Murray Chalmers. Mr. Chalmers was born in Halifax County, Virginia in 1845. After serving during the Civil War, he attended the University of Virginia. He married Emma N. Radford in 1868. For some years he resided in Bedford County, Virginia where he worked as a schoolteacher. He arrived in Danville in 1884 to take the position of high school principal which position he maintained until the close of term in 1895. A few weeks later, upon returning home from church services at the Episcopal Church, he collapsed in his home on Wilson Street and passed away.

Daniel H. Duggar and his young family were next to occupy the house, again, as renters. Daniel, merely 21 when he took occupancy, shared the home with his wife and their two children, as well as his mother-in-law, two brothers-in-law and two servants. Daniel was born in Danville 1874. He began his career in the family business of Dugger & Patrick, tobacco commission merchants, but by 1900 he was employed in the wholesale grocery business. By 1910 he had taken his family to Atlanta, where they remained for nearly twenty years before finally moving to New York City, where he spent the remainder of his life and where he died in 1963.

In 1904, the house was sold to Sarah K. Perkinson, a widow who shared the house with her two adult children Lelia and Albert. Sarah, born in 1838, was the daughter of William H. Waddill and Mary Ann Llewellyn Waddill. She married James Robert Perkinson, a brick mason, in 1858. James died in 1903. When Mrs. Perkinson died, the house passed to her son, Albert.

The youngest of eight children, Albert Perkinson was born in Danville in 1876. He was employed as a bookkeeper and later manager for the Export Leaf Tobacco Company. Her retired from that business, but finding that idle life did not suit him, he became a tax accountant. He married Carolyn McNeil Turner in 1915, and the couple had two children. After retiring a second time, Mr. Perkinson’s health began to take a turn for the worse. In January of 1954, after taking a bath, he slipped and fell in the bathroom of his Green Street home and broke his hip. Two weeks later, he passed away at Memorial Hospital.

After half a century of ownership, Mr. Perkinson’s widow sold the home to Miles and Viola Bennett who occupied the home for the nearly twenty-five years.

Miles Talmadge Bennett was born in 1896 in Iredell, North Carolina. He married Viola B. Davis in 1921. After Mrs. Bennett’s death in 1978, Mr. Bennett sold the house to Drs. Coy and Ann Garbett who have maintained the beautiful home since that time.

Sources:
Census and Vital records and some images found at Familysearch.org
Grave images and vital information, including biographical sketches found at FindaGrave.com
Death notices and other information found at Newspapers.com
Census, Directory, Newspaper, and other information compiled by Paul Liepe