On the 5th of May 1898, the trustees of several lots of land on the north side of Sutherlin Avenue (those prepared for sale four years earlier and placed in trust in order to pay a debt incurred by William T. Sutherlin) sold the undeveloped land at 145 Sutherlin Avenue to Thomas Pollard Kinney.

Mr. Kinney was born on the 29th of September 1859 in Augusta, Virginia to Thomas Holloway Kinney, a doctor, and Mary Todd Winston Pollard of Hanover, Virginia. Mr. Kinney worked in the telegraph business, and it was that business that brought him to Danville in the early 1880s when he arrived to assume a position as manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company which was just getting its start in Danville. He married Emma Lancaster Brown in 1887. Emma, born in Danville in 1865, was one of four daughters (and one son) born to George Carter and Sallie Weymouth Welsh Brown. Sometime in the 19-teens, Mr. Kinney gave up the telegraph to enter into the coal business, eventually establishing himself under the name of the Standard Coal Company, which enterprise he maintained until shortly before his death in 1945 when his health began to take a marked decline. He passed away in his home on the 18th of June 1945, the victim of a heart attack.

From at least 1910, the Kinneys shared their home with Emma’s mother and her unwed sister, Maggie Brown (no relation to the coincidentally named wife of P.F. Conway of 134 Sutherlin Ave). By 1940, another sister, the widowed Lizzie Brown Moss, was living there as well. Following the death of Lizzie’s husband, and with her health in decline, the Kinneys made room for her in separate rooms she rented from her sister and brother-in-law. The girls’ father, George Carter Brown, had worked as a cashier for the Bank of Virginia, located in the 1860s on the corner of Main and Union Streets (the F.W. Woolworth building in the 1940s), and it was there Lizzie (and presumably her siblings as well) was born.

Maggie, who never married, worked as a school teacher. The Brown children were well educated, having attended Miss Mariah Green’s private one-room school “which stood in Green’s Field which now, roughly, is that area at the corner of Jefferson Street and Paxton Street.” She passed away at home just six months after her sister Lizzie.

As Emma’s health declined, she sought the companionship of her nieces, Catherine Kinney and her sister Laura Moss (Catherine married the nephew of Mr. Kinney and therefore shared their name) who lived with her in her latter years. Emma passed away in her home on the 1st of January, 1956 of a stroke, leaving the house to her niece Laura, the daughter of her sister Lizzie.

It should not be forgotten that the sisters had a brother who died at a young age. It’s unclear what precisely his ailment was, but he was aware of it and apparently looked forward to the relief he would find in death. The Reidsville Review of 10 July 1889 reported that, while William was attending a sermon given by E.G. Moseley in April of that year, the Reverend read a certain passage aloud: “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for though art with me.” At the conclusion of which William cried out, “Thank God. Thank God!” and these were “his last words on earth.” He died not quite a week later on the 3rd of May 1889 at a mere 21 years of age.

Sadly, very little is known of Laura’s life. She was born in 1892 to Robert Kennon Moss and the previously mentioned Lizzie Fisher Brown Moss. Robert married Lizzie in 1889, and from that time the family lived at 924 Green Street and remained there until Mr. Moss’s death in 1934. Laura likely moved to 145 Sutherlin at the same time as her mother, and there she remained until her own death at the age of 80 on 3 January 1973. Having no one to leave the house to, the executors of her will, First National Bank, auctioned the home which was purchased by Ellen Yow.

Ellen Rebecca Yow was born 22 may 1919 in Greensboro, North Carolina to Rev. Ralph Johnston Yow and Nellie Juanita Richardson Yow, both of North Carolina. Ellen went to school in Danville, graduating from George Washington High School in 1936. She attended classes at Stratford that same year before transferring to Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee and then Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond. Like her father, she was a pastor, serving the Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church for many years and later served as a Visiting Minister for Main Street United Methodist Church. She was also a member of Moseley Memorial Methodist Church, linking her own history to that of the Brown sisters who were nieces of the man who had founded that congregation. Ellen lived at 145 Sutherlin Avenue for ten years, and, in 1983, sold the home to Michael and Deborah Boswell, who, three years later, sold the home to Frank and Teresa Shields who sold the property two years later to Merian Stallings.

In 1992, the house fell into the care of William and Mary Foley, and it has been lovingly maintained by the Foley family ever since.

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