The Hurts of Blackstone

From Courier-Record archives: by Ed Conley

The home of Dr. Jethro Meriwether Hurt has long since disappeared in the pines and weeds along route 46 south of Blackstone. Only a picture remains of Auburn in which his wife and one of his daughters, Molly, stand in faded blacks and white. But it was a picture of a family that was to burst into a portrait of brilliant color as children came and grew strong in the town that Dr. Hurt convinced the towns’ fathers to call Blackstone.
Why not name our town after a famous 18th century judge and scholar, Lord Blackstone, he said. It seemed so logical. Blacks and Whites, a town famous for its two taverns and Bellefonte race track where men drank and gambled and the preachers wailed, should have a distinguished face hanging in its town hall.
Because of men like Dr. Hurt, the pictures that history’s hand would draw on Blackstone’s wall would fill out with men and women like Lord Blackstone whose bearing was aristocratic, whose character was strong and who valued excellence through education above all else.
Ret. Admiral Samuel Hurt and his sister Mary (Lady Bird) Irby, two of five living grandchildren of Dr. Hurt, were pulling out some old pictures that went deep back into Blackstone’s history. On the floor by the pile were nine college diplomas ”Father expected us to all be first in our class,” Adm. Hurt said.

On the wall of Lady Bird’s parlor (she was called that at birth) being the youngest girl, her brother said) was a portrait of their grandfather. Her stately home, Poplar Hall off Route 460 across from Slaw’s Restaurant, is surrounded by protective box woods and wide fields and seems designed expressly as a guardian of memories.
Adm. Hurt, now 93 and standing straight as an Annapolis sword, could still see those early years clearly. Although he had no personal memory of his grandfather, he had a strong image of the doctor who was responsible for the health of county farmers and early residents of Blacks and Whites. In fact, he was the only doctor here during the Civil War. By petition, the people had called him back from the battlefields around Petersburg.
But he was also remembered for his faith. Lady Bird saw him as a man who, when he finished doing all that was medically possible for his patients, got down on his knees and prayed. He was a founder of the Saint Lukes Episcopal Church, she said. Again the name, Saint Luke was a famous physician.
When sick with a bladder infection, he was taken on a wagon to Farmville where a renowned surgeon, Dr. Peter Mettauer, could help him. Standing over him with his top hat on, Dr. Mettauer made such an impression that one of Dr. Hurt’s four sons would be named after him.
Joseph Mettauer Hurt would become one of Blackstone’s most distinguished citizens.
His other three sons would also mark the young town with their names. One, W.E. Hurt, the oldest, would build a building to house his insurance business. Today, we have the Irby Insurance Company because of him.
Another, Sam Hurt, started the New Era Newspaper, a forerunner of the Courier-Record. Admiral Hurt laughs when remembering Sam.
“He was a pompous fellow…got drunk when he was 18 and never sobered up until he was 83…and I was named after him,” he added dryly.
Lady Bird remembers how he would put an uncut log in his large fireplace and just push it in as it burned.
And there was H. Muse Hurt, who was a farmer on Ridge Road, and the two daughters, Mollie, who married Fletcher Irby, and Jenny, who married Norman Epes.
But it was Joseph and Mollie that would do more than the others in filling up the family portrait of the town. They would have nine children and ten children respectively. Three of Mollie’s are still living, Mrs. Pearl Epes and Mrs. Frances DeBerry of Blackstone and Mrs. Sarah McRee, of Bon Air.
But of all the portraits, none are more distinguished because of scholarship and profession than t he children of Joseph M. Hurt.
Of his seven sons, two were lawyers, two were doctors, two were military officers, “and there was George,” as George Hurt used to say of himself. George broke the mold and decided to make money rather than go to school, Adm. Hurt said of his brother fondly, for George died a few years ago.
Jenny, the oldest, had married Wilmer R. Turner, who would write the definitive history of Nottoway Families.
He picked up a picture of his brothers and sisters when they were together at Wildred Epes’ cabin in 1947. Joe, the oldest son, a Richmond lawyer, had died a few years earlier. The Admiral’s hand seemed to reach out to caress their faces and the memories of growing up a few miles from town “where the road kinks” on Ridge Road.
There were so many of us that Father built a school and called it Hurt Number Eleven, he said with his eyes twinkling from the fun of it all. It was named number eleven either because he had 11 children (two didn’t livelong) or because it was in District 11. Teachers, usually a relative of the family, would live in their farm house and teach t he children both during the day and at night during study time.
Father was a banker and he went to town each day in a buggy, he said. How straight he must have sat you could imagine while looking at his son who in his nineties was still standing straight as a pine tree, bending slightly now to look at the picture.
His father was cashier of Citizens Bank and Trust for 37 years and largely responsible for its success, his close friend and president of the bank, Captain J. M. Harris said of him. Joseph Hurt made an “unselfish contribution of leadership and cooperation in all matters of moral and material up building of the community.” Capt. Harris wrote in his eulogy in 1926. He also represented during three consecutive terms the district of Amelia and Nottoway Counties in the General Assembly of the state, was president of the Virginia Bankers’ Association, and because of his interest in education, was a member of the public school board.
So strong was his belief in the importance of education, he even moved from his farm, which he loved, and built a house on South Main Street, so his children could attend the public school when it opened in 1907. (That house is now the rectory of the Catholic Church.)
Nor did Admiral Hurt forget how his mother, Mary Cralle, in the early morning before the household got up would write each week to her children in college. When totaled up, his parents paid for 45 years of college in the education of their children. But now only memories and rolled up diplomas remain among the pictures of smiling children standing in line as they marched through those early years together.
But the strong imprint of a father before whom there was no excuses for not doing your very best has never added. “Every night all those children went to the upstairs library and studied until bedtime while Father read his newspaper.” Lady Bird remembered.
Yet his straight backbone could quiver with laughter. “Stop that romping up there,” he yelled on night after he had turned out the upstairs lights. Unheaded he took down his switches from the wall and headed for the source of this breach of order, switches testing the air.
Returning sooner than expected, his wife asked what happened. He replied, “nothing, those rascals were all on their knees praying.”