The portion of land lying on the north side of West Main Street, opposite Stewart Street (which once marked the boundary line for the estate of A.T. Stewart) and running westward to Randolph Street was once the estate Harry C. Ficklen inherited from his father, John Fielding Ficklen. The house, called Oak Lawn, sat on a large piece of property which eventually came to be known as Ficklen’s Field. Sought after by real estate developers during Danville’s expansion in the early part of the 20th century, the property was the source of much speculation and discussion amongst Danville citizens, both for its curious owner and for the fact it had been falling down around the Ficklen family even before Harry inherited it. In 1907, West Main was annexed into the city, at least in part so that public transportation could be provided to the Schoolfield mills via the street car. Ficklen famously would not allow tracks to be built in front of his house, and so the streetcar was forced to take a detour. The property was claimed by some to be haunted, and others shared stories of the “dirt eaters” who snuck onto Ficklen’s property late at night to consume the sweet-tasting clay that was so plentiful on the that plot of land. Ficklen was a historian and a storyteller who was known to embellish a tale, particularly when it cast a positive light upon himself. When Nancy Astor returned to visit the home of her birth in 1922, he gave a long-winded speech listing the accolades of his “cousin” Nancy which caused her some considerable embarrassment, and years later was still writing stories and telling tales of that time his famous “cousin” returned home to visit (Nancy never considered Danville her home, only the place of her birth, neither is it clear how Mr. Ficklen was related to Nancy or if he was related to her at all). Harry Ficklen was a curious fellow and an eccentric who had almost been a famous author and journalist, only he had been made to come home to care for his ailing father and to take over the property at Oak Lawn. He seemed content to live his life in Danville as a committed bachelor, and so, when, in 1916, Harry married the beautiful and highly educated Mary Louise Tucker, the local population was thrown into a state of disbelief. He abandoned his property on West Main Street and moved into a home on Grove Street with his new bride. Oak Lawn, by then simply known as Ficklen’s Field, had fallen into such a state of disrepair, that the city soon stepped in and forced its sale. The house was demolished and the property divided.

In April of 1921, a portion of that lot was purchased by Hattie Lovelace Noell and commissioned the construction of the home that stands there today.

Hattie Lovelace was born on the 18th of June 1861 in Danville to James and Mary Miles Lovelace of Pittsylvania county, Virginia. She was educated in public schools and later at Roanoke Female Institute (now Averett). In 1878 she married William Young Noell of Oak Hill, North Carolina.

Mr. Noell was born December 6, 1854. Educated in Halifax, he came to Danville around the time of his marriage and found work with Sol Fleishman, a dry goods dealer. He later worked for Estes and Wooding (Harry Wooding) who also dealt in dry goods. He left dry goods at some point and entered the tobacco business, starting out as an independent buyer. He later worked for Charles Conrad and Sons as a traveling representative building up demand for Bright Leaf tobacco before forming a partnership with John E. Hughes where he oversaw the wrapping department. He maintained his connections with Hughes for nineteen years when he formed his own establishment under his own name with his son, Eugene, as partner. At the time of his death, his firm was among the largest in the city.

Hattie was seventy years old when she commissioned her home to be built (though it was likely only nominally in her name, a convention adopted by businessmen who wished to protect their personal property from risks incurred by their business dealings). Mr. Noell died just four years later in 1925 of a stroke, though he had been struggling with a heart condition for some time prior.

Hattie sold the home in 1934 to James W. Tipton.

James Walker Tipton was born 13 July 1894 in Hillsville, Virginia to Walter S. Tipton and Pattie Howard Tipton. He attended college at Hampden-Sydney College and then the Medical College of Virginia before attending Cornell University. He then did his internship work at the New York Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital. He returned to Danville in 1922 and opened his practice here with the late Dr. Tom Edmunds (for whom a hospital was named which stood on West Main Street where the overpass is today).

In 1919, Dr. Tipton married Alpha Heath Johnson. Alpha was born on the 28th of December 1889 in Hillsville, Virginia. Mrs. Tipton was a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She died very suddenly in 1951. In November of 1955, Dr. Tipton sold the house to James and Mattie Carter.

James Louis Carter was born in Pittsylvania County on the 29th of July 1909, the son of James Robert and Louise Lewis Carter. He arrived in Danville 1925 to make his fortune in the tobacco industry. Before his retirement in 1968, he was vice-president of Dibrell Brothers Tobacco Co.

James married Mattie Sue Jones in 1937. Mattie was born the 15th of September 1908 in Chatham, Virginia. She arrived in Danville about 1924 and went to work for Memorial Hospital after receiving her nurse’s training at Edmunds Hospital (on West Main Street) and in 1926 she received the Kaufman Award for “outstanding contribution to the nursing profession”. She was the first superintendent of Annie Penn Memorial Hospital in Reidsville from 1930-31. She was employed as a supervisor at Memorial Hospital up until the time of her marriage. She died in 1960 of ovarian cancer.

Thirteen months later, Mr. Carter married Ellen Shore Hayes. Ellen was born in Boonesville, N.C. on the 25th of May 1919. There is not much recorded history about her. Her obituary gives only the scant facts. She had two children, presumably from a previous marriage, and she died of a heart attack on New Years’ Eve, 1974.

In May of 1967, James and Ellen sold the home to Richard and Eleanor Klein.  Three and a half years later, they sold the home to R. Kirby and Joan S. Godsey who assumed the balance of a promissory note taken out by the Kleins in the amount of $26,000.

Raleigh Kirby Godsey was born on the 2nd of April 1936 and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama with his two older brothers. He was raised by a single mother, his father having died in an accident before he was born. Mr. Godsey attended New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary where he met Joan Stockstill, a native of Hattisburg, Mississippi. Joan had received a bachelor’s degree in Music from Mississippi College and had transferred to the Theological Seminary to pursue a Master in Church Music and Religious Education (she eventually became a teacher in the college’s school of Music). Mr. Godsey was at the Seminary to complete his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Theology degrees, having earned his bachelor’s in History and Religion from Samford University in Homewood, Alabama. The couple married in 1959, and then moved to Marion, Alabama in 1962 where they witnessed the Civil Rights Movement firsthand. It was there Joan helped to launch a Head Start program to serve underprivileged children, while Dr. Godsey served as professor at Judson College.  They returned to New Orleans for a time, and then Dr. Godsey went back to school, this time at Tulane University, in order to get his Ph.D. in Philosophy. In 1969, the couple moved to Danville, where Dr. Godsey became Academic Dean. The following year, they purchased the house on West Main Street.

In 1977, the Godseys moved to Macon, Georgia where Dr. Godsey became the 17th President of Mercer University. Mercer had four colleges and schools when Godsey took over presidency of the school. The university established seven more during Dr. Godsey’s tenure. His time at Mercer was not without controversy. In 1996, after his book When We Talk about God … Let’s Be Honest was published, the Georgia Baptist Convention took exception to the book, deeming it heretical, and it was subsequently banned from Baptist bookstores because it “questioned some aspects of faith that made more conservative readers uncomfortable.” The ban proved to be the best thing that could have happened to the book in respect to sales. In 2005, a student gay-rights group held a “Coming Out Day” on the Mercer campus. Once again the Georgia Baptist Convention took umbrage. Godsey attempted to reassure the convention that while “Mercer does not advocate homosexuality” it did allow “discussions on the matter.” The convention voted to sever their 172-year relationship with the school.

Dr. Godsey retired in 2006 after 27 years as President. Today Mercer is the nation’s “premier independent Baptist university.” After his retirement, he established the Joan S. Godsey Center for Keyboard Studies at All-Steinway Mercer University and gifted $1.5 million for the purchase of 40 pianos for the school.

Dr. Godsey is 89 and still alive and well at the writing of this article.

Upon their move to Georgia, the Godseys sold their West Main Street home to Timothy Carter brown and his wife Beverly. Mr. Brown was Averett’s director of planning until 1980 when he took a job with a community college near Richmond. That was when the Browns sold the home to William Stephen and E. Louise Sailer. Dr. William S. Sailer was one time assistant superintendent for Danville Public Schools.

In 1988, the house was purchased by John P. and Marcia H. Dever who owned the home for only fourteen months before it was sold to Thomas Reynolds.

Thomas G. Reynolds became Vice President of Dibrell in 1992. A former employee of Ernst & Young, he joined Dibrell in 1982 and was responsible for monitoring financial operations of Dibrell’s Brazilian subsidiaries. Between 1996 and 2004, he was Dimon’s international controller based in the U.K. From 2001 to 2008, he served as Dimon’s corporate controller in the U.S.

In August of 2002, Mr. Reynolds either sold his home to Dimon or put it in the company’s name. It’s unclear exactly what was going on at this time regarding the house, but Mr. Reynolds, along with three other employees, were being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission around that time for bribing foreign government officials. According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and published in the Danville Register and Bee in May of 2010, “Dimon International Kyrgyzstan, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimon, paid more than $3 million in bribes to the Kyrgystan government officials to purchase tobacco for resale to Dimon’s largest customers.” The complaint sited bribes to government officials in Thailand as well in exchange for sales contracts. One of the four employees in the investigation was found to have been authorizing and directing bribes through a “special account”. Mr. Reynolds, between the years of 1997 and 2001, “formalized the accounting methodology to record the payments from that account, according to the complaint.” Subsequent to their investigations, the S.E.C. filed a civil injunction action claiming the men violated the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. Reynolds agreed to pay $40,000 in penalties and settled without admitting or denying the allegations.

The property, which had (at least nominally) sold to Dimon in August of 2002, was sold in December of that same year to William Wentz and Sonya Cross who have owned it since that time.

Information provided in this post was derived from the following:

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
Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raleigh_Kirby_Godsey
Steinway & Sons:  https://www.steinway.com/news/articles/mercers-chancellor-r-kirby-godsey-honors-wife-with-an-all-steinway-school
Macon Magazine: https://maconmagazine.com/kirby-godsey/