Mamie Doe Moore purchased the plot of land at 930 Green Street in 1904 for $750. Mamie was formerly Mary Doe Tyack, daughter of the early Danville developer and land speculator Joseph Landon Tyack. It was likely Mamie who commissioned the home to be built. Nine months after she purchased the property, she sold it to James P. Acree for $2,500. The house changed hands several times in its first five years of its existence, but, finally, in 1909, the home was purchased by the family of James Oscar Warthen.

Mr. Warthen was born 26 March 1874 in Montgomery, Maryland, the eldest of three children born to George Washington and Laura Virginia Miles Warthen. James appears to have arrived in Virginia via Portsmouth, where he was employed with the Seabord Air Line Railroad. Shortly after assuming his new position, he met and subsequently married Miss Wrennie Saylor. Wrennie was a native of Anson County, North Carolina and was born there in 1876 to Daniel L. and Susan Beeman Saylor. The couple married in Wadesboro Township in Anson County in December of 1898. The newspaper announcing their marriage described Wrennie as a young woman “greatly loved by her many friends here and elsewhere for her many noble traits of character,” and further congratulated Mr. Warthen “upon capturing such a prize”.

In 1900 the couple were living in Rowan County, North Carolina when their first child, George Saylor, was born. In 1904, a second child was born to them. He was named after his father, but he only lived six months.

It was most likely employment that brought the family to Danville. James accepted a position with the mechanics division of the Danville and Western Railway, where he worked for the remainder of his life. At the time of his death in 1936, he was master mechanic and had been in that position for many years. James was in apparently excellent health until the day he died of a sudden heart attack. He collapsed in his home on the evening of Saturday the 29th of November, having returned home from work with symptoms of what he had described as indigestion. Dr S.E. Hughes was sent for and identified the condition as one of the heart. Treatment was administered, but Mr. Warthen’s condition continued to worsen until at last the end came.

Mrs. Warthen, after the death of her husband, relocated to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where her son Dr. George Saylor Warthen, was professor of English at Gettysburg College. Wrennie outlived her son, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1954.  His body was returned to Danville to be laid beside his father’s in Highland Burial Park. Wrennie, however, remained in Gettysburg. She died six years later, the last two years of her life spent in a convalescent home.

After Mr. Warthen’s death, Wrennie sold her home to Allan L. and Annie T. Fox.

Allen Fox was a native of Danville, having been born on the 29th of April 1899 to Thomas Allen, Jr. and Willie Ann Raines Fox. Thomas Jr., was the “Son” of T.A. Fox & Son, undertakers whose enterprise once occupied the building 631 Main Street. Educated in the Danville public schools, Allen went to work as an accountant for Dan River Mills in 1919 employed in the order and billing department and later in the banking department. In April of 1920, he married Annie Josephine Terry. Annie was born in 1900 in Rockingham County, Virginia to William Gaston and Josephine Sheffield Terry. The couple had one child, Allan Lee Fox, Jr. The Foxes lived in the home for nearly thirty years. Mr. Fox passed away in 1962. Three years later, Mrs. Fox sold the house to Garland Thomas and Rena Motley Mitchell.

Like Mr. Warthen, Garland Mitchell was a railway man, having been employed by the Southern Railway for 26 years. Sadly, Mr. Mitchell did not get to enjoy the house long as he passed away in 1977 at the age of 55. He had enjoyed good health until breathing trouble took him to seek help. He spent the last twelve days of his life in Memorial Hospital, expiring on the 5th of October from advanced stage lung cancer.

Garland’s wife, Rena Motley Mitchell remarried shortly after her husband’s death, and in 1979 the property was sold again. It changed hands several more times until it was saved from foreclosure by the Danville Historical Society who put it into the loving hands of Gordon and Melinda Willis who owned it for four years before selling it to Cameron and Elizabeth Clement. Since 1995 it has been the home of Kamala Washington McGee.

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