Blog
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The Pascucci House, 215 Jefferson Ave
Though the city of Danville’s public records assign the build date of the Craftsman style home at 215 Jefferson Avenue as 1920, it’s not entirely clear when this structure was built. In 1879, V.J. Clutter sold the empty lot to P.L,. Rendleman, probably as a portion of a larger property. Mr. Rendleman died in 1888 and it was his wife, Georgette, who conveyed the property In 1911 to their son, Charles I. Myers of Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1913 Charles sold the property to L.V Burton, and in 1921, Mr. Burton sold “the southwest portion of the lot” to Christine Pascucci of 428 Wilson Street, and it may have been…
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208 Jefferson Avenue
Demolished More coming soon.
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Cardenas Market
No one who lives in the Old West End has not been wondering what is going on at the building on the corner of Jefferson, Wilson, and East Green/Newton streets. Well, at last the secret is out! Welcome to Cardenas Market at 815 Wilson Street! Doors are expected to open the first week in June. The market, owned and operated by mother and daughter team, Patricia Cardenas and Marleni Cardenas Grothe, reflects a strong Mexican theme with richly painted walls and bright murals grounded by plants and exposed wood. While the store and many of its offerings reflects the culture and heritage of the owners, make no mistake, Cardenas Market…
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Medicine Man, Part Five: Virginia
If the dark-eyed, long-haired Nanzeta of Los Angeles was a colorful figure who appeared frequently in the newspapers, the Nanzetta of Danville bore this quality in common as well. Of course we don’t know with 100% certainty that the two men are the same, but there are a lot of reasons to suspect they are apart from his description alone. At the very least, the Nanzetta of Virginia was every bit as colorful a character as the other. Goodbye California In March of 1905, The Los Angeles Herald published a piece with the headline “Prince Nanzetti’s Tiger Fat Works No Charm”. In the article, Nanzeta was said to have “explained…
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Medicine Man, the Great Index
Part One: The Advent of the Great Nanzetta ~The Advent of Prince Nanzetta Montezuma: a dramatization~Newspaper accounts: Reported incidents of Nanzetta and his claims Part Two: Nanzeta, Prince of Tibet ~The Phenomenon of the Great American Medicine Show: The forgotten significance of the “Snake Oil” sales trade and its impact on modern advertising, pharmaceutical sales, performance theater, and medical law.~ Not All Tall Tales are Untrue: Why the story of an exiled Aztec noble might have sounded less preposterous then than it does now. Part Three: Marriage of a Montezuma ~The Oriental Remedy Company: An unreliable but valuable witness to the character(s) known as Prince Nanzeta, as well as a prime example of the methods, practices,…
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Medicine Man, Part Four: Doppelgangers and Rivals—Introducing Van Santen
What’s in a name? Before Nanzeta’s court appearances in 1905, the aliases for the “prince” are many, but they don’t really get us any closer to his true identity. Remember that it’s only by searching the name Nanzeta, in all it’s variations, that we have arrived in California in 1902-1905 to begin with, and the similarities between Prince Nanzeta Montezuma and the Nanzetta of Danville aren’t in his name alone. The descriptions provided in the papers during this period identify the young Aztec Prince as being “a small, olive-skinned youth, with large, heavily fringed eyes, a full red mouth and long hair.” It’s difficult to imagine that this combination of…
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The Boatwright-Sohmer House, 136 Chestnut Street
Around 1890, William T. Sutherlin began selling off portions of his land in order to raise money to pay a debt. On the 1st of April 1890, lot no. 28, fronting Chestnut Street, was sold to Herbert Lee Boatwright. Boatwright soon thereafter commissioned the construction of a home for himself and his new wife, formerly Mary E. Vaughan. Born September 12, 1862 in Buckingham County, Herbert Lee Boatwright was the fifth child of seven born to Dr. John Guerrant and Pattie Pendleton Boatwright. The Boatwright family moved to Danville in 1865, when when “Lee”, as he was called, was just three years old. Lee’s father died in 1874, leaving Lee,…
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Medicine Man, Part Three: Marriage of a Montezuma
Nanzetta would have struck Salt Lake City like a lightning bolt. We know very little about the young medicine peddler’s time in Utah, but we can guess much. Firstly… A Little Relevant Folklore To understand Nanzetta’s impact in Zion we must first attempt to get inside the mind of a turn-of-the-century Utahn, beginning with a little background on, yup, you guessed it: Mormonism. The Book of Mormon, of course, is the central book of scripture of the LDS faith and is considered by its followers to be a record of God’s dealings with the people of ancient America from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D, the pinnacle of which being…
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The Talley House, 126 Chestnut Street
By all accounts, May Talley was an enterprising woman for her times. May (she later used the more authoritative Mae) was one of nine children born to Dr. Thomas Jefferson Patrick and Laura Crump Patrick. A druggist, Dr. Patrick came to Danville in 1853 to work in the tobacco industry. His sister, Jane, had married William T. Sutherlin, a respected tobacconist and innovator in the industry. Several years later he gained notoriety in the events surrounding the end of the Civil War. May had a son, Herbert, but divorced the boy’s father in 1886, not something a woman commonly did in those days. In 1889, her aunt and uncle Sutherlin…
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Missing Memorial to the “Dignity of Southern Womanhood”
Did you know this monument to the memory of Eliza Johns is actually the base to a now missing statue? Though it took almost fifty years to erect, is stone and concrete plinth is all that remains of the statue that once stood here, the culmination of the hard work and dedication of Dr. Benjamin Brooke Temple and his wife. Dr. Temple was born on the 22md of March1839. He had just turned 22 and was “studying medicine in Paris when the storm broke, and he hastened home and joined the colors”. One of eight sons born to Benjamin and Lucy Lilly Temple, he joined the cause of the Confederacy…
