Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part VIII

by Glenn N. Holliman


This is the eight in a series of stories with photographs of my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

Please explore Ancestry.com for more information on these families. 

The railroad to and from Damascus closed when the timber played out in 1926.  The automobile became more and more important to moving people and merchandise.  A chemical factory came to town, and needed trucks to move it's products to market. The roads continued to improve as America moved deeper into the automobile age.

I am not sure who is in this photograph.  The man on the far left with his arm about a child could be either Ward or Dave Wright.  Identifications welcome.

During the World War, even older men had to register for the draft. One registering was my great uncle, Toby Miles Osborne (1876 - 1951), pictured below. He was a heavy set man, whose life included legal and financial upheavals. In 1917, he listed on his draft registration that he was an innkeeper in Damascus, Virginia. Perhaps he assisted his sister, Pearl Osborne Wright and her husband, Dave, with their inn and various businesses.

In the photo below, one observes a child, my Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright.  She is standing in front of her Uncle Toby and Aunt Alta Holtsclaw Osborne (1878-1933). In the background stands this writer's great grandmother, Frances Wilson Osborne, born in Ashe County, North Carolina in 1851, and died in Bristol, Tennessee, 1940.

  

There was time to celebrate the young in Damascus.  Below Louise Stansbery, 4 years old, stands on the Model T Ford, perhaps used to motor persons from Glade Valley to Damascus as a taxi service that Dave Wright pursed for a time.