The lot upon which the home at 238 Jefferson Avenue was built was acquired by Lizzie Wood in October of 1903. She paid $800 for the lot of land. A short time after her purchase, a house was erected here.

Elizabeth Slaughter Wood was born on the 5th of February 1868 in Danville to James and Caroline Chambers Wood. She was educated at “the Old Baptist College”, what her obituary indicated to be the present day Averett University. She was an educator, and taught in the Schoolfiled schools. The Wood family resided on Green Street before the turn of the century, but by 1900, Lizzie was living nearby with her widowed sister, Florence Shuff, at 871 Green Street. It doesn’t seem that Lizzie ever lived in her Jefferson Avenue house, and likely kept it as rental income.

Among her renters was John Greene Lea who came to Danville as a refugee evading the law in North Carolina after the murder of John W. “Chicken” Stephens. Lea lived in the home for several decades, from his arrival in Danville where he joined his brother, a successful tobacconist just after the turn of the century until shortly before his death in 1935.

When Miss Wood died in 1922 of uterine cancer, the house passed to certain of her family who maintained the home as rental property until 1962 when it was sold to Sadie McDonald. For a period of some twenty years, the home was known as Five Forks Beauty Shop, with the McDonalds living on premises. It was likely they who covered the floors with lineoleum and the walls with modern wood paneling. Such coverings, though unattractive by today’s standards, likely have served to preserve much of the interior details of the house, and the McDonalds were sensitive enough to the home’s historic significance and design to leave all the architectural details, including fireplace mantels, in place.

For a time in the 1990s the house stood vacant, until C.B. Maddox and Bill Wellbank took ownership of it. In recent years, the house has suffered from neglect and weather. It is presently waiting a new owner to restore it to the jewel it still is and will be again.

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