The Georgian Revival home which stands at 776 Main Street was built by Richard Warner Peatross in 1905. Mr. Peatross was born in Caroline County, Virginia on the 28th of October 1839. Richard spent the early years of his education at home before going on to Emory and Henry College. He graduated in 1861 and shortly thereafter joined the cause of the Confederacy. He was present at the opening battle at Bull Run and fought in many of the major battles, including Sharpsburg, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. He was also present at Appomattox Court House on the day of surrender. Though he saw the war through from beginning to end without serious bodily injury, the mental trauma of the conflict left him reluctant to speak of his experiences. So silent was he on the subject that many were unaware he had served at all.
Following the War, Mr. Peatross taught school in Hanover County, where, at the same time, he began his law studies. In 1867, after being admitted to the bar, he moved to Danville and began his law practice, eventually partnering with George C. Cabell and William T. Harris. In addition to his law business, Mr. Peatross took an interest in the development of the textile mills and was among those who signed the 1882 charter establishing Riverside Cotton Mills.
In 1873, he married Sarah Roselyn Redd.
Sarah was born on the 10th of November 1849 to Frank Dabney Redd and Anne Watson Redd. She was educated by private tutors at Dr. Dabney’s School for girls before going on to study at Hampden Sydney College and then Murfreesboro College. She became a teacher after the war and found a position at a private school at Red Oak Grove in Charlotte County, North Carolina. She arrived in Danville in 1871 having taken a teaching position with the Methodist College for Young Ladies. It was as a member of the Main Street Methodist Church that she met Mr. Peatross who taught a Bible class to a group of young men. They married in April of 1873. The couple had seven children, two of whom died in early childhood.
In 1877, Mr. Peatross bought a plot of land from the Worsham family and built the brick Italianate home at 864 Pine Street. He shared the home with his tobacconist brother, Cecil, and with his brother-in-law, Frank Redd, while Martha Major, live-in nurse, took care of the children and Jane Medley lived and worked as a cook.
As his prosperity waxed, Mr. Peatross eventually decided to follow the example of many of his fellow businessmen of means, and, in 1905, he built a new, larger, and more ostentatious home on Main Street. As is evident by the 1906 image of the home, much of the ornate detail has since been removed.
In 1912, after working for some time as the city attorney, Mr. Peatross was appointed judge of the Corporation Court of Danville, succeeding A.M. Aiken. He successfully filled the position for five years and retired in 1917 owing to his failing health. He left the position with the unique distinction that no higher court had ever overturned one of his rulings.
Mr. Peatross died of lung disease on the 19th of May 1919. At the time of his death he was vice-president of the Commercial Bank, director of the Piedmont Hardware Company, and director of Dan River and Riverside Mills. He was also a trustee of the Randolph-Macon School (later Stratford College) which he had helped to establish.
Sarah, who went by the name “Sallie”, maintained the Main Street home after her husband’s death and shared it with the family of her daughter Lisbeth who rented the home with her husband Barnette Lea and their two daughters, Rosalind and Lisbeth. Indeed, Lisbeth the elder had never left home, and when she married Barnett in 1913, he came to live in the Peatross’ large home.
Not much is known about Lisbeth, sometimes known as simply “Beth”. She was married to her husband for 21 1/2 years before suing for divorce. She was awarded that divorce, uncontested, on the grounds of “desertion” in February of 1935. By September, Barnett was dead, having died from cirrhosis 0f the liver.
Barnett was the son of John Greene Lea of 238 Jefferson Avenue who had come to Danville to escape arrest by U.S. Marshalls when he had directed, as head of the KKK, the murder of John W. “Chicken” Stephens in the downstairs meeting room of the Caswell County Courthouse in May of 1870. Lea successfully kept the secret until his death when an affidavit written by himself was released to be read by the public. In Danville, Lea was known as an upstanding citizen, a true southern gentleman, and a contributor to Danville’s development. Barnett’s death was such a shock to John, that he fell, breaking his hip. Days later he contracted pneumonia and passed away.
Five years later to the month, Sallie died. She suffered a fall while trying to get into bed and struck her head hard enough to cause a concussion, from which she died. She was 92.
After the death of her mother, the Peatross home went up for auction. John Calhoun Roach and his wife Lucie Alice Thomas Roach were the new owners.
John was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia on the 1st of November, 1882. In 1905, he married Lucie Thomas, also of Pittsylvania county and seven years his junior. The couple had five children. There is little to find in documented records regarding the family, but the Register and Bee of August 16, 1942 did bear an interesting piece on the agricultural efforts of Mr. Roach, who, in 1917, decided he wished to grow peaches in Pittsylvania county. Uncertain which peach cultivar to grow, he planted 250 trees on his family farm. Of the 250 trees, there were 20 varieties which ranged in size, color, and maturation date beginning from early mid-season until almost fall. For the next few years, he studied the trees and from the fruits that were born, he decided to eliminate all but six. From these he chose the biggest and best, and developed his own variety, maintaining 6,000 trees which grew “a white peach with a slight red tint”. Upon bringing one to the Register office, it was measured at 8 1/2 inches in diameter. Mr. Roach’s hopes were that peaches might become a crop to rival tobacco, and thereby stabilizing the farming industry locally.
Apart from selling produce from their farm, it seems Mrs. Roach also watched the children of working women to bring in a little money. They also let rooms.
Though the Roaches seem to have maintained their home on Main Street even while staying active at their farm in the county, it doesn’t appear that the house was friendly to the family. As of echoing the ghosts of previous injuries (Sallie’s who died from a fall) Lucie, on the 9th of June 1947, fell in the home and fractured her left arm in two places. So severe was her injury that she had to be sent to Charlottesville for treatment. A year later, she fell again, this time in the rear yard, and broke her right arm, but the fact that she had so recently suffered a similar injury was not lost on the papers. In January of 1950, a visitor suffered a fit of some sort on the stairs and fell, striking his head on the steps. He was injured and sent to the hospital. Police, again, thought the incident curious and investigated further only to decide it was owing to some sudden “attack” but whether it was an attack of ill health or of some other more maleficent source, the author did not specify. To further the bad luck, the paper reported two incidents of robbery, one in 1948, when two suits of clothes and a pocket book were stolen, and then in 1950 when a billfold containing $19 was stolen.
By 1955, the home served as the offices of Dr. Ralph Landes. Ralph Roy Ginsberg Landes was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the 2nd of September 1911 to Abraham Ginsberg and Pearl Landesco. It appears that, at some point as he entered adulthood, he took a modified version of his mother’s name. Dr. Landes was educated at the University of Wisconsin, and then at the University of Chicago and trained in urology in Chicago and Boston. He served in the Army during World War II and at the conclusion of the conflict arrived in Danville to set up practice. He and his wife did not live in the home, but opened the clinic with partners Drs. Ralph T. McCauley and Dr. Irvin Melnick. Dr. Landes was a well respected and highly honored physician, and, during his practice at 776 Main Street was elected to membership in the United States Section of The Societe Internationale D’Urologie. Dr. Landes was in Danville until about 1968 when he returned to Chicago, where he died in 1989.
The house at 776 Main Street was left vacant for some time in the period between Mr. Landes removal and the arrival of the next tenant. Harrison Printing & Addressing Services occupied the home for several years in the 1970s, followed by a period of vacancy and then Smith Snead, CPA in the 1990s. It is presently the Law Offices of Vaughan & Vaughan, PC and Dan Williams, CPA
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
