The First Peatross House, 864 Pine Street

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The brick Italianate home at 864 Pine Street was built by Richard Warner Peatross who purchased the land in 1877 from the Worsham estate. The house was likely built that following year.

Richard Warner Peatross was born on the 28th of October 1839 in Caroline County on the farm his grandfather homesteaded upon emigrating from Wales in the late 1700’s. The sixth child of ten born to Robert Sale Peatross and Anna Elizabeth Scott Peatross, Richard spent the early years of his education at home before going on to Emory and Henry College. He graduated in 1861 and shortly thereafter joined the cause of the Confederacy. He was present at the opening battle at Bull Run and fought in many of the major battles, including Sharpsburg, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. He was also present at Appomattox Court House on the day of surrender. Though he saw the war through from beginning to end without serious injury.

Following the War, R. W. Peatross taught school in Hanover County, where, at the same time, he began his law studies. In 1867, after being admitted to the bar, he moved to Danville and began his law practice.  Peatross served as the first counsel to a new local company that he chartered in 1882 – the Riverside Cotton Mills

R. W. Peatross was a member of the Main Street Methodist Church where he taught a Bible class to a group of young men. When Miss Sarah Roselyn Redd came to Danville to teach at the Methodist school, she caught Mr. Peatross’ eye, and in 1873, they married.

One of Peatross’ more famous cases was the defense of fellow attorney John T. Clark, accused of murder in the first degree.  Clark had shot and mortally wounded Reverend John R. Moffett in 1892.  Moffett had intense anti-liquor views and published a newspaper dedicated to the prohibitionist cause.  He wanted Danville, by local option, to become a dry city.  In his closing statement, Peatross claimed that his client “Clark had been slandered, insulted, and hunted down.”  The jury bought Peatross’ argument, at least to some degree, and convicted Clark of the lesser charge of manslaughter.  He was sentenced to five years in the State Penitentiary.

In celebration of Mr. Peatross’s further success, he decided to trade in his Pine Street home to join the wealthy and influential men of Main Street, and so, at 877 Main Street, he erected the imposing Georgian Revival Style house that stands there today and maintained the Pine Street home as rental property.

In 1912, Mr. Peatross retired from his law practice in order to take up a judgeship, serving as the judge of the corporation court of Danville. His portrait (right) hangs today in Circuit Courtroom #2. He died on the 19th of May 1919 after a long illness.

Those who resided in the Peatross home after the family’s removal to Main Street include L.P. Bransford and his family.

Louis Pendleton Bransford was a native of Buckingham County where he was born in 1851. He arrived in Danville in the 1870s where he advanced his career in tobacco. He married Edna Maude Foster in 1880 and the couple had five children. By 1890, Mr. Bransford had given up tobacco to become an evangelist preacher in the Methodist church.

In 1916 the house was sold to M. Dole Turner, of Barker, Turner and James, Inc., a well-respected men’s clothing shop. Mr. Turner lived in one part of the house while renting the other out to Garfield Caswell, a clerk with the post office, and his wife Laura.

Mack Dole Turner was born in Henry County, Virginia on the 5th of November 1874 the youngest but one of sixteen children born to William Hunter Turner and Margaret Jane McGhee Turner. He married Zellie Phillips in 1906. The couple had one son, Algernon Keeling Turner. Mr. Turner died of pneumonia in 1964 at the age of 90. Zellie died six months later of heart failure.

By 1935, the Turners sold the home to Leo Carwich, a fellow retail merchant.

Leo was born on the 30th of April 1886 in Macon, Georgia to parents who had immigrated from Russia just a year prior. By 1900 the family was living in Danville. Leo was drafted into the military during World War I and by that time was proprietor of a tailor shop and was living at 749 Patton Street. Sometime around 1945, Leo moved to Lilesville, North Carolina where he died in 1960. It may have been around this time that Leo and his wife Virginia divorced. “Jennie” remained in the Danville home. Her parents soon moved in with her to share the burden of upkeep. When her mother died in 1953, the house was sold and became a four unit apartment building.

The house fell into serious disrepair and neglect until the Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority acquired it in 2012. In 2017 it was purchased by Keisha Corbett who has been carefully restoring the home since that time.

 

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