Nannie Clark purchased an empty lot of land from Patton, Temple & Williamson, Incorporated in 1923. The property was located on the soon-to-be developed Marshall Terrace, then Marshall Street. Two years later, she traded that lot of land back to Patton, Temple & Williamson in exchange for 40 feet fronting the eastern side of Chestnut Street. It was probably the enterprise of Patton, Temple & Williamson, dealers is real estate, insurance, and “rents” who built the home that Nannie shared with her sister for 38 years. Prior to living on Chestnut street, the sisters resided with their mother at 121 Jefferson Avenue in a home long since demolished to make room for the expansion of Epiphany Episcopalian Church.

Nancy “Nannie” Melville Clark was born in 1890 in Pittsylvania County. Her sister, Ruth N. (which probably stood for Noell, her mother’s maiden name) was fourteen years her sister’s senior. The girls were born to Peter Samuel Clark and Elizabeth Susan Noell Clark.  Neither sister ever married, and the two were uncommonly close, despite their difference in age. The closeness was perhaps because of the loss they shared of the two siblings born in the  years between their own births. Another sister, Annie died at the age of 16 of unknown causes, and Price Livingston, a resident of Jefferson Street (121) died at the age of 31 of Tuberculosis.

Nancy was employed as a stenographer for Patton, Temple & Williamson. Ruth worked in the Millinery department at L. Herman department store. Ruth, the elder sister, died suddenly in 1967 from a coronary occlusion following an illness of ten days. Nannie remained in the home until 1979 when, having become bedridden due to breast cancer, she died at Memorial Hospital of lung failure following pneumonia, a complication of her developing cancer.

Following Nannie’s death, First and Merchants National Bank, Nannie’s executor, sold the home to Theo Melvin Collie. Mr. Collie was born in Pittsylvania county on September 17, 1917. A veteran of World War II, Mr. Collie spent his life as an employee of the U.S. Government. He married Margaret Maultsby and the couple had one son, Quentin Noeel Collie. In January of 1974, Mrs. Collie died from liver disease as a complication of diabetes. Three months later, seventeen year old Quentin died of severe bilateral pneumonia. He had been a resident of Lynchburg Training School, “the Virginia State Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble Minded” where many of the state’s disabled were kept isolated from the rest of the “normal” public. The institution, advocated and endorsed by eugenicist Aubrey Strode, opened in 1910 and became famous for its forced sterilizations, poor medical care, and general disregard for the humanity of disabled people. The school, as much of a prison as a hospital or training center, remained open until 2022, after the conclusion of a fourteen year investigation by the United States Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division) found that the institution had failed to prepare its residents for life outside the facility or to actually discharge those residents who had been cleared to be freed.

Tragically, six years after the death of his wife and son, Mr. Collie died alone in his Chestnut Street home, a victim of acute alcoholism. He was 62.

After Mr. Collie’s death, just three weeks following his one year anniversary of having purchased the property, First Merchants National Bank stepped in once more and sold the home to Wayne P. Grachow who owned the home for just six months before selling it to Bruce N. and Darlene F. Drake.

In 1987, the Drakes sold the home to Clarence Humphrey. Today it is the home of Jefferson and Dorothy Corbett.

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