John M. Hutchings acquired the land at 901 Green Street in 1872 from James Wood. Shortly thereafter, a home appeared on the property (as seen in the 1877 Beers’ Map shown right). According to Gary Grant in his book Victorian Danville, Fifty-two Landmarks: Their Architecture and History Mr. Hutchings was “a Confederate veteran who had distinguished himself as a wartime surgeon.” He and his son John R. Hutchings, a lawyer, later partners in the tobacco business and owners of Star Warehouse located on Spring Street.

Dr. Hutchings, born in 1825, had been married twice. The first time in 1851 to Celestia Ann Carter, nine years his junior. In 1853, at the age of 18, she gave birth to a daughter, Parthinia, but it is unclear the child survived infancy. Parthinia was just twenty when she gave birth to twin sons, Chesley Martin and John Richard in 1854. She died just two years later. In 1857, John married Sallie Ann White, and together they had one son, William Tarpley Hutchings, born just a year later.

The Danville newspaper of the 5th of April, 1887 reported that Dr. Hutchings, while using the water closet (whether in his home or his warehouse, the paper did not specify), accidentally shot himself with a pistol and died. When the police arrived, “a pistol with an empty chamber was found in the inside pocket of his coat, and the opening into the pocket was pinned together. The ball entered just above the left temple and ranged diagonally upwards through the brain.” Dr. Hutchings was not used to carrying a gun, but his son sewed a small pistol into the pocket of his jacket whenever he went into the country, and Dr. Hutchings having just returned from one such trip, had the pistol on his person, secured within the pocket of his jacket, which somehow discharged.

After Dr. Hutchings death, the house passed to his son, William.

William was born in Chatham, Virginia in 1858 on his father’s plantation. When he was twelve, his parents relocated to Danville. He attended Virginia Military Institute and then Richmond College. He returned to Danville and found work in a lawyer’s office where he gained practical skills for his future career. He was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1880, subsequent to attending Yale. He graduated in 1881 with his law degree and returned to Danville to practice. It was during this time that he met Mamie Ellen Key and the couple were married in May of 1885. In 1886, he was made index clerk in the House of Representatives, and the family relocated to Washington, D.C. where their first child, Ellen Blair, was born.

Upon the death of his father, William and the family returned to Danville. He stayed just long enough to settle his father’s affairs. He sold the home to neighbor Richard “Button” Graham, and then and moved to Fort Smith Arkansas where his second child, Lucy Key was born.  In 1889, Mary Compten was born in Indian Territory, near Muskogee, Arkansas where the family settled soon after. In 1900, Lucy died. In 1908, William Jr. was born but only lived a year. In his grief, William turned his energies toward his career and became a successful and influential lawyer, and it was through his work and his dedication as a public servant that he was given the title Major by the first governor of Oklahoma, C. N. Haskell.

In January of 1918, William Hutchings was appointed assistant attorney general, but he was hardly to step into his new appointment before he fell suddenly and fatally ill. Having suffered from kidney issues throughout his adult life, a buildup of uric acid in his body became toxic, and he fell into unconsciousness. He died on the 3rd of February 1918, just one week after his new appointment as assistant attorney general.

The city of Muskogee entered a state of deep mourning, and thousands attended his funeral.

901 Green Street, under the ownership of Button Graham, a local architect, was used as income producing property. Among its tenants in 1890 were the manager of the Danville Register as well as the editor for local news.

Robert Eldon Freeman, a native of Page, Virginia, was born in 1849. Too young to fight in the Civil War, he was nevertheless a decorated soldier, having commanded the Danville Blues in the Spanish-American War in 1898. He married Lillian Llewellyn in 1882, and the couple had five children, some of whom made auspicious marriages. Rhoda, born in 1884, married Edwin Piper Cox who would become a judge in Chesterfield County. Mary, born in 1890, married John Wesley Williams Carter, who would eventually become a state senator. Mrs. Freeman herself was the daughter of Colonel John Richard Llewellyn, a Confederate war hero at Antietem. After the war, Mr. Llewellyn enjoyed a short spate in politics before becoming editor of the Norfolk Journal from 1882 until his death in 1886. On April 9, 1917, while visiting her daughter Lillienne and her husband, John Pryor Cowan, a former lawyer who had turned newspaper reporter, Mrs. Llewellyn died suddenly. Eleven years later, Mr. Llewellyn, while visiting the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cox, died just as suddenly of a heart attack.

Sharing the premises was Francis “Frank” Sylvester Woodson of Warrenton, North Carolina. Born in 1851, Mr. Woodson married Emma Pattillo of Caswell, North Carolina in 1853. Frank got his start in Danville, first in tobacco, then telegraphy, and then as a traveling salesmen. At last he landed in the newspaper business in the 1890s, but soon left Danville for Norfolk and then Richmond where he became known as “Uncle Frank” to his fellow newspapermen both at the Richmond Times, where he spent the remainder of his career and within the larger newspaper community. “To every newspaperman in Virginia,” his death announcement, written by his fellow editors, read on August 23, 1922, “the report of the sudden death of Frank S. Woodson today comes as a direct personal bereavement.”

By the time of the 1900 census, John L. Berkely and his family were living as tenants here. John Lewis Berkely was, at the time of his residence at 901 Green Street, Principal of Rison Park High, but by the time of his death in 1925, he had served Danville schools for over forty years. Born in Westmoreland County in 1842, John was the eldest son of Landon Carter and Sarah Campbell Berkeley (his brother lived nearby at 150 Holbrook Ave). As a young man, Mr. Berkeley prepared himself to become an educator. After serving in the Civil War (and suffering wounds), he received his education, and, in 1879, he and partner James M Quick started a school for boys on Colquhoun Street.  Mr. Berkeley left Danville briefly for Winchester, Virginia, but returned to take charge of the city’s only school on Loyal Street. He became principal of Rison Park High School and maintained that position for over thirty years. He at last retired in 1920 and moved to Richmond, but inactivity brought on a rapid decline. His battle wounds began giving him trouble, and he was soon confined to bed, where he spent the last year of his life and passed away January 19, 1925, just two weeks after his 82nd birthday. In 1927, when Danville’s high school moved into its new quarters on Holbrook Avenue, the old building on Grove Street became an elementary school and was given the name John L. Berkeley. The school was demolished in 1973 (you can read more about this and other early Danville schools here).

In 1909, Mr. Graham sold the home to Charles Louis Booth. Mr. Booth was born in 1870 in Franklin Virginia to Christopher Silas Booth and Susan Elizabeth Wooding Booth, a cousin of Danville Mayor, Harry Wooding. In 1872, the Booth family arrived in Danville. Charles was educated in Danville and went to college at Oak Ridge Institute in North Carolina. Upon graduating, he entered the banking business. He worked for Commercial bank until it closed in 1933 during the height of the Great Depression when he took a position as Registrar of the City of Danville, which post he held for twenty years.  In 1892, he married Annie Leitch Duncan. The couple had five children: two sons (who predeceased their parents) and three daughters. Charles and his brother, Peter, are best remembered for having designed and built the four nearly matching homes on West Main Street. It was possibly while he was engaged in that endeavor that he lived in the home on Green Street as those homes are ascribed with a 1909 build date, while Charles and his family owned and lived in the Green Street home from 1909 until 1913 when the Booths sold the home to F.W. Brown.

Little is known of the Browns and who they were (deed records give only his initials), but he owned the home for merely three years before selling it to Charles L. Davenport.

Charles Lewis Davenport was born in 1862 in Halifax County, Virginia. He arrived in Danville in 1916, the same  year he acquired the home at 901 Green Street, and here he spent his first years in this city and shared the home with his mother, Bettie Davenport, and his widowed sister. Charles never married and made his fortune, first in tobacco as a farm owner and then in real estate with land holdings all over the city. By 1927, the home was officially known as the Davenport Apartments with the house being divided into four units. Among those who called the apartment  home were Thomas A. Fox, Jr., funeral director with T.A. Fox and Sons.

Louisa and Frances Crews, the half-sisters of Beverly Sydnor Crews of 806 Main Street, lived here as well. Both women, born at the family estate of Belle Grove in Chatham, were educators in Danville schools and were members of a very large and prominent Danville family.

As Mr. Davenport had no children, the Davenport Apartments fell to trustees for American National Bank and Trust at the time of his death. The bank sold the property to Danville printer John B. McDaniel. He owned the home for only fifteen months before he sold it to J.H. Tate and Arietta Tate Siviter, father and daughter who appear to have operated the home as rental property under the name of the Davenport apartments until Mr. Tate’s death in 1957 when his half portion of the undivided estate passed to Arietta. In 1968, Arietta put the deed in her husband’s name as well as her own, and the couple seem to have moved into the premises. Arietta died in 1984, leaving the house to her husband who continued to live there until his death in 1990 when the home passed to their daughter Betty Hart Siviter who soon after sold it.

P.J. Parson and L. Jane Hall were next to purchase the property. It’s unclear if they ever lived there, but city directories do indicate that at least part of the house was vacant for some time in the 1990s. In 1999, Frederick Meder, Sr. and his wife Elaine purchased the home.

From Mr. Meder’s obituary:

Frederick Louis Meder, Sr., age 90, of Vero Beach, FL, passed away on April 13, 2021.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 16, 1931 to parents, Daniel, and Rose Binder Meder.

Serving his country in the 1950’s, Frederick was a veteran of the United States Army, obtaining the rank of Sergeant.

He was a graduate of Oswego College, New York.

Mr. Meder retired as a former teacher and track coach of Bethpage School District, New York.

He was a member of Ascension Lutheran Church Danville, VA and Our Savior Lutheran Church, Vero Beach.

Mr. Meder is survived by his two sons, Frederick and his wife, Laura and Lawrence and his wife, Barbara, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Frederick was predeceased by his wife, Elaine A. Meder.

The property is currently being restored and prepared as rental property by his sons Fred Jr. and Lawrence Meder.

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