All in the Family

128 Hurt Street, Chatham, Virginia

The Davis-Sours house has been continuously occupied by the same family longer than any other home in Chatham. It appears on the 1878 Gray's Map of Chatham as belonging to “H. Davis,” and the building was probably quite recently constructed at that time. Ownership of the house passed from Homer and Catherine Davis to their daughter and son-in-law, Mary Nannie and Charles Gray Sours, who were married in the house on February 25, 1891. The property has been handed down through two more Sours generations, to Jesse D. Sours, Sr. and Jesse D. Sours, Jr.

Charles Gray Sours was a son of well-known local ironworker Jacob Sours, who as foreman at the Birch Creek Iron Works constructed the ornamental iron railings which still grace the Pittsylvania County Court House, where they were installed in 1854.

An original smokehouse can still be seen behind the house. According to family lore, Charles and Mary Nannie Sours were so fond of dancing that they had a ballroom built on the east side of the house, a long one-story addition which now serves as a kitchen and dining room.

At the time the Davis-Sours home was constructed, the Davis property stood astride the northern entrances to the town, a three-way intersection of the Louis Island Road (now the northern loop of Military Drive), Wards Springs Road (North Main Street), and Hickey's Road (Hurt Street / Chalk Level Road).

Further information and sources:

See Irene G. Sours, Homes in Chatham, Virginia, Chatham, VA, 1977, p. 11.
Further information was provided by Bunny Dameron and Mary Lee Black, great-granddaughters of Charles Gray Sours. Mrs. Black's home is located on land which was once the orchard of the Davis-Sours house. She and her husband Dr. Bill Black offer overnight accommodations at La Chaumière Cottage on their property.
Data on Jacob Sours and the Birch Creek Iron Works is found in Herman Melton, “Birch Creek Works County's Early Industry: Civil War Cannons Believed to Have Been Forged in Pittsylvania,” The Pittsylvania Packet, Pittsylvania Historical Society, Chatham, VA, Spring 1995, pp. 3-5.
Extensive Sours Family Papers are found at file #4435, Southern Historical Collection, Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Charles Gray Sours is seen among the Chatham Town Council of 1900.
Only two residential ballrooms still remain from Victorian Chatham. The other is located at the Sims-Mitchell House on Whittle Street.

This webpage is provided by Mitchells Publications and the Sims-Mitchell House, as part of an online documentation of Chatham, Pittsylvania County and Danville, Virginia.