The Noell-Parnham House, 888 Pine Street

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The property upon which the home at 888 Pine Street stands was once part of the estate of John T. Watson. In 1884 the lot was sold to W.Y. Noell. It was likely he who commissioned the Italianate home to be built there.

William Young Noell was born in December of 1854 in Oak Hill, North Carolina, the son of James D. and Virginia Penick Noell. Educated in Halifax, he came to Danville in his twenties and found employment with the dry goods dealer Sol Fleishman. He later took employment with Estes and Wooding, another dry goods business, of which Mayor Harry Wooding was a partner. He eventually quit the dry goods business in favor of tobacco and found employment with Charles Conrad and Sons, for whom he served as a representative in the western states where he worked to build up the demand for bright leaf tobacco. He went on to form a partnership with John E. Hughes in the wrapper business before forming a partnership of his own with his son Eugene, finding much success in that enterprise due to the contacts he had made while working for Conrad. His many years work in the tobacco industry led to his eventual election as president of the Danville Tobacco Association.

Mr. Noell Married Harriet Butler Lovelace in 1878, and when he purchased the Pine Street home in 1884, it was in her name the deed was written, a common practice for men of business who, as a means of insuring their property against financial risk, placed their personal property in the names of wives and children to keep it safe from seizure. R. Noell shared the house not only with his wife and their children, but let rooms to others—R.A. Schoolfield, treasurer of Riverside Cotton Mills, and Robert Treadway, a clerk, as well as domestic help in the way of a cook and a nurse for the children.

Mr. Noell’s life would later be ruined by scandal and wrongdoing and he would die in 1925 of a “complete collapse” but during his time at the Pine Street address, he seems to have lived a fairly peaceful existence.

In 1897, Mr. Noell traded his Pine Street home for a larger, flashier Main Street address (1021), and the home was sold to Edwin Thomas Parham.

Mr. Parnham was born in Brunswick, Virginia in March of 1860 and spent his early life there, where he met his wife Harriet Prince of Dinwiddie Courthouse. They were married in 1884.

The Parnham family arrived in Danville in 1891. Mr. Parnham was employed in the insurance business and was the district manager for the Life Insurance Company of Virginia at the time of his death in 1929. His obituary described him as a “progressive minded” man who played a frequent role “in civic betterment and [was] identified with all of Danville’s forward movements” from the time of his arrival here until his death.

Mr. Parnham and his family, including two children, Grace and Edward “Prince” lived in the home until 1905, when it was sold to C.S. Anderson for $2,700.

Chesley Samuel Anderson was born at Oak Level in Halifax County, Virginia on the 16^th of January 1868. Early in his career, he moved to Rocky Mount where he learned the tobacco trade. About 1891, he arrived in Danville to establish a leaf business with his brother, John B. Anderson They purchased the former Kinney Tobacco Co building at 549 High Street and there established themselves as the Anderson Brothers Company. Sometime after 1910, the brothers converted the factory from one that manufactured tobacco products to one that made overalls.

In 1890, just prior to arriving in Danville, Mr. Anderson married Ida Hill Moss, with whom he shared his home. His brother also lived at the Pine Street address, along with their nephew, Claude Hugh Sheppard and his wife Maryland Virginia.

Ida passed away in 1906, shortly after purchasing the Pine Street house, and leaving behind five children between the ages of 14 and 2. Mr. Anderson married again in 1910. Blanche Crafton, a native of Charlotte, 13 years her husband’s junior, had four children with her new husband, and outlived him by 57 years when he died in 1926. She lived to be 98 years of age.

Long before then, however, in 1919, the Andersons sold the home to D.M. Tanner and his wife Mary.

Daniel Morse Tanner was born in Mecklenburg, Virginia on the 22nd December of 1869. Mr. Tanner married Mary Lillie Brown in 1894. The couple arrived in Danville sometime around 1900, where Mr. Tanner established himself as a grocer. The couple had nine children.

In 1930, just two years before Mr. Tanner’s death of stroke, they sold the home to Lula Richardson, a milliner in a hat shop who shared the home, at first with borders like the widow Helen Cobb and other single working women. Her aunt, Jennie Mohr also lived with her.

Lula was born in the Laurel Grove community of Pittsylvania County on the 9^th of July 1880.

Lula maintained the home until 1945 when she sold it to Harry E. and Maggie G. Long who turned around and sold the home four months later to William L. Davis and his wife Velna.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis were both natives of Virginia. William was born in 1886, while Velna, five years his junior, was born in 1891. The couple had four children, though their second daughter, Mary Arline died as a young child, many years before inhabiting the house. Mr. Davis was employed as a painting wallpaper contractor until his retirement. He died in 1978. Velna died two years later.

A few years prior to Mr. Davis’ death, in 1973, the couple sold the home to Mary M. Cahill.

Mary Magdelene Cahill should be a name familiar to many. Born the 3^rd of April 1918 in South Hill, Virginia, Mary came to Danville as a young woman. She attended Averett College and graduated in 1940. In the days when the Masonic Temple was an office for attorneys, Mary was employed there as secretary. In 1967, she left that position to take employment at the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry where she worked until her retirement in 1983.

Mary was instrumental in organizing the Danville Historical Society which formed in 1971 as a response to Danville’s demolition craze of the 1960s and early 1970s. It was she who applied to the state to recognize the Old West End as a historic district, and she served as the first chairman of the Architectural Review Board. She wrote several books on local history, including co-authoring, along side Gary Grant, the much treasured Victorian Danville, Fifty-two Landmarks: Their Architecture and History (available at the DanvilleMuseum of Fine Art and History bookstore). When Danville held its first Delius Festival in 1986, she wrote a book in advance of that event. Indeed, Danville owes much of its preserved history to her, and her death in 2011 hit many hard.

In 1975, Mary sold her home to the Kodejs family who owns it today.

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Sources:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.orgImages and vital information, including biographical sketches found at FindaGrave.comDeath 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