By Holly Kozelsky
Before the Age of Information, people had different ways to keep in touch with fellow residents and to know what was happening in the community – somewhat, at least.
Join the Martinsville-Henry County Historical Society for “Connected Community,” a look at the different types of local media through the years. The free program will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, at the MHC Heritage Museum, 1 E. Main St., Martinsville.
It includes the predictable newspapers – but did you know there were so many? They included the Martinsville Bulletin, which also has been the Martinsville Daily Bulletin and the Henry Bulletin; Henry County Enterprise; Martinsville Tribune; Martinsville Standard; Henry County Journal; Martinsville Morning Post; Bassett Broadcaster; and Martinsville Herald.
Another important form of local print media is the company newsletter, which various large firms around here published. Of course, the newsletters had information the company wanted workers to know, but it also lives on today as a marvelous record of births, graduations, marriage, deaths and other milestones, as well as fun and entertaining looks at local culture and lifestyles and people through the years.
Radio was so exciting when it first came along that the Henry Bulletin carried front-page articles on the first radio programs which were listened to by people here in Martinsville and Bassett. Then the area got its first radio stations, WMVA in 1941 and WHEE in 1954.
Full-scale commercial television broadcasting began in the U.S. in 1947, and in Martinsville, Star News was founded in 1990 and BTW21 in 2002.
This talk, presented by MHC Historical Society Director Holly Kozelsky, a former editor of the Martinsville Bulletin, also features other developments in media, such as typewriters, including one that wrote vertically down the page instead of horizontally across it, and also the dueling types of early music records – the cylindrical record used for Thomas Edison’s Amberola and the flat one (which won out in the market) used by Victrola.
Other programs will include:
Historic Gardens Restoration, with Debbie Lewis, member of Garden Study Club and former president of the Garden Club of Virginia: 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15
The History of Funerals and Local Funeral Homes by Jarred Marlowe: 3 p.m. Sunday, April 19
Gravely Furniture Company and Ridgeway Clocks by Will Gravely: 3 p.m. Sunday, May 17
World War II by Hunter Haskins – 3 p.m. June 21
William Byrd by Garrett Channell – 3 p.m. Sunday, July 19
