Most people in Martinsville know Liberty Fair Mall. Far fewer know what stood on that land before it — or who lived there. The answer to both questions leads back to one of Henry County’s most colorful and well-loved figures.
Watt Harden Hairston was born at Beaver Creek in Henry County, the son of Major J.T.W. Hairston of Mississippi and Virginia and Mrs. Elizabeth P. Hairston of Beaver Creek. He was educated by private tutors, went on to Episcopal High School, and finished at the University of Virginia — a pedigree that reflected both the Hairston family’s standing and Watt’s own sharp mind. He never seems to have let any of it go to his head.
By 1907 he was living in the family residence on what is now the Liberty Fair Mall property, a home that the Danville Register newspaper described as the natural setting for his “pleasing personality.” He was, by all accounts, a man who made everyone around him feel welcome, thoroughly democratic in manner, popular across every class of society, and known for keeping a wide circle of friends. The Register called him “a thorough gentleman with the highest sense of honor; a genial and accomplished host.”
He was also, apparently, a menace on the road.
Local legend has it that Watt Hairston held license tag number two — the second licensed automobile in the state of Virginia. He drove it with great enthusiasm and very little restraint through the streets of Martinsville at what were then considered reckless speeds, somewhere in the range of 20 to 25 miles per hour. On one occasion he was pulled over by a police officer on horseback while heading toward Danville to visit relatives. The officer informed him that the fine for speeding was five dollars. Watt handed over a ten-dollar bill and told the officer he planned to come back through that same evening.
He was 38 years old when he died in Baltimore in May 1916, where he had gone seeking medical treatment. His body was brought home by train, accompanied by his mother, Colonel Harden Hairston, and Mr. B.H. Townes. The funeral was held at Beaver Creek, where his family had been burying their dead for more than a hundred years. The service drew a large crowd of friends and relatives, with pallbearers arriving from Martinsville, Spencer, Roanoke, Reidsville, Danville, and as far away as Cooleemee, North Carolina. The Danville Lodge of Elks sent a floral arrangement and a delegation that made the trip by automobile. The Knights of Pythias of the Martinsville Lodge, who later named their building on the courthouse plaza after Hairston, conducted their ceremony alongside the regular funeral service. The Register noted that the floral offerings were “unusually beautiful and numerous, many of them coming from a distance, testifying to the wide and general popularity of the deceased.”
After his death, his home was converted into the Watt Hairston Hospital in 1919. It served the community for about a year before fire destroyed the building on March 7, 1920. The land changed hands many times over the decades that followed, and today a shopping mall sits where Watt Hairston once lived.
Watt Hairston spent only 38 years on this earth, but he left the kind of impression that outlasts a building. Henry County has known a great many prominent families. Not many of them produced someone quite like him.
Jarred Marlowe is a local resident and historian. He is a member of the Col. George Waller Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Blue & Gray Education Society, and the committee chair for the Martinsville-Henry County 250 Committee. He may be reached at [email protected].
