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Henry County is a county located in the U.S. state of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 50,948. The county seat is usually identified as Martinsville; however, the administration building, county courthouse, and Henry County Sheriff's Office are located on Kings Mountain Road in Collinsville.The Henry County Adult Detention Center is located on DuPont Road in Martinsville.
Bassett is a census-designated place (CDP) in Henry County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,100 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Martinsville Micropolitan Statistical Area. The town was founded along a rail line by the same family that later started Bassett Furniture. Bassett Furniture's headquarters have remained in Bassett since it began in 1902.
Isham Randolph was an American planter, merchant, public official, and shipmaster. He was the maternal grandfather of United States President Thomas Jefferson.
Joseph Martin, Jr. (1740–1808) was a brigadier general in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War, in which Martin's frontier diplomacy with the Cherokee people is credited with not only averting Indian attacks on the Scotch-Irish American and English American settlers who helped win the battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens, but with also helping to keep the Indians' position neutral and from siding with the British troops during those crucial battles. Historians agree that the settlers' success at these two battles signaled the turning of the tide of the Revolutionary War—in favor of the Americans.
Colonel Robert Carter I was a planter, merchant, and government official and administrator who served as Acting Governor of Virginia, Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and President of the Virginia Governor’s Council. An agent for the Northern Neck Proprietary, Carter emerged as the wealthiest Virginia colonist and received the sobriquet “King” from his contemporaries connoting his autocratic approach and political influence. Involved in the founding of the College of William and Mary, he acquired at least 300,000 acres and engaged one thousand enslaved laborers on fifty plantations. Carter was the largest land owner in Virginia.
John Parke Custis was an American planter and politician, only son of Martha Washington and stepson of George Washington. He is now known for his progeny, especially those raised by President Washington.
Bartholomew Dandridge was an early American planter, lawyer and patriot. He represented New Kent County in the House of Burgesses, all five Virginia Revolutionary Conventions, and once in the Virginia House of Delegates before fellow legislators selected him as a judge of what later became known as the Virginia Supreme Court.
Burwell Bassett, Jr. was an American planter and politician from New Kent County and for two decades from Williamsburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Like his father, he served in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, and in addition won election several times to the United States House of Representatives, where he served for more than a decade in three different districts, because of census-required reorganizations.
Beaver Creek Plantation, under the ownership of George Hairston, was a large slave-holding tobacco plantation and the center of an empire in tobacco-growing and slave-trading built by the Hairston family, Scottish emigrants to Pennsylvania in the early 18th century. Located just outside today's Martinsville, Virginia, the plantation thrived in tobacco production and textile manufacturing, as well as producing household goods and raising livestock. At one point the enslaved blacks of Beaver Creek were tending a thousand yam plants; in one day they made 660 candles.
Frances Jones Dandridge was the mother of Martha Washington, the first First Lady of the United States. She was born in New Kent County, Virginia. Her father Orlando Jones and maternal grandfather Colonel Gideon Macon served on the House of Burgesses in Colonial Virginia. Her parents were prosperous Virginian landowners.
Col. John Dandridge of Chestnut Grove was a colonel, planter, politician, and Clerk of New Kent County, Virginia from 1730 to 1756. He may be best known as the father of Bartholomew Dandridge and the first First Lady of the United States Martha Dandridge Washington. His grandson John Dandridge also served in the Virginia General Assembly.
Ada Jessamine Shumate was an American artist, historian and cartographer, winner of the "Award of Distinction" in 1955 from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
William Ellison Jr., born April Ellison, was an American cotton gin maker and blacksmith in South Carolina, and former African-American slave who achieved considerable success as a slaveowner before the American Civil War. He eventually became a major planter and one of the wealthiest property owners in the state. According to the 1860 census, he owned up to 68 black slaves, making him the largest of the 171 black slaveholders in South Carolina. He held 63 slaves at his death and more than 900 acres (360 ha) of land. From 1830 to 1865 he and his sons were the only free blacks in Sumter County, South Carolina to own slaves. The county was largely devoted to cotton plantations, and the majority population were slaves.
William Beverley (1696–1756) was an 18th-century legislator, civil servant, planter and landowner in the Colony of Virginia. Born in Virginia, Beverley—the son of planter and historian Robert Beverley, Jr. and his wife, Ursula Byrd Beverley (1681–1698)—was the scion of two prominent Virginia families. He was the nephew of Peter Beverley (1668–1728), Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and the grandson of wealthy Virginia planter William Byrd I (1652–1704) of Westover Plantation. Beverley's mother died shortly before her 17th birthday, and he was sent to England.
George Hairston was a Virginia planter, patriot and politician in Virginia who served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Henry County after serving as a Colonel in the American Revolutionary War and later served as a Brigadier General in the War of 1812. The first of three men of the same name to serve in the Virginia General Assembly, unlike the two other men, he did not serve in the Virginia Senate, although this Hairston may be better known for building Beaver Creek Plantation, which remained his home and which he farmed using enslaved labor, or for helping to found Martinsburg.
Alexander Hunter was a noted 18th century tobacco planter in Southwestern Virginia, and supplier to the American Revolutionary Army. His home, "Hunter's Place", was along the Smith River (Virginia) in Henry County.
John David Bassett, Sr. was a noted American industrialist who formed the Bassett Furniture Company in 1902. During the late 1960s, the Bassett Furniture Industries, Inc., was the largest manufacturer of wooden furniture in the world, with sales of over $118 million in 1968.
John Henry Pinkard was a businessman, banker, and herb doctor in Roanoke, Virginia. He was also known as a spiritualist and clairvoyant. Other people considered him a practitioner of quackery and a charlatan.
Burwell Bassett Sr. was an American planter, patriot and politician from New Kent County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, who served in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, and in the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788.
Colonel Thomas Lygon III was a Colonial Virginian statesman, militia officer, and landowner. Born into a genteel family in England, Lygon emigrated to the Virginia Colony in the early 1640s. He served in the House of Burgesses, representing Henrico County, and was a justice of the peace for Charles City County. Lygon owned large parcels of land along the Appomattox River, and worked as a surveyor until his death in 1675. He was the patriarch of the American branch of the Lygon family.
References
- ↑ National Archives and Records Service.
- ↑ Bassett, Mary Henrian. The Bassett Family in Henry County, Virginia, with Stories, Mainly of the Woodson Bassett Branch. Martinsville, Va: Bassett, 1976. Page 3. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2856828
- ↑ Hill, Judith Parks America. A History of Henry County, Virginia With Biographical Sketches of Its Most Prominent Citizens and Genealogical Histories of Half a Hundred of Its Oldest Families. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1925. Page 124. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/181016592
- ↑ Hill, Judith Parks America. A History of Henry County, Virginia With Biographical Sketches of Its Most Prominent Citizens and Genealogical Histories of Half a Hundred of Its Oldest Families. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1925. Page 124. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/181016592
- ↑ Bassett, Mary Henrian. The Bassett Family in Henry County, Virginia, with Stories, Mainly of the Woodson Bassett Branch. Martinsville, Va: Bassett, 1976. Pages 10-13. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2856828
- ↑ U. S.--Pension Bureau. List of Pensioners on the Roll January 1, 1883; Giving the Name of Each Pensioner, the Cause for Which Pensioned, the Post-Office Address, the Rate of Pension Per Month, and the Date of Original Allowance. Washington: Govt. Print. Off, 1883. Volume V, Page 86. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/247814557