Craig & Co. (Earlier Photo)
Mrs. Madge Craig Curtis and Miss Cora Craig
Craig Building Site
Hursey Funeral Home Site
Craig & Co. Site
Radio and TV Center
Bob Richardson Electronics Shop
Dr. William Perry: This site housed Craig & Co. for a number of years and was sold to Hursey-Gaskins Funeral Home. A small building was built adjacent to the west side of that building. Rudolph Hursey and W. W. “Red” Gaskins operated the funeral home. Rudolph went in at Normandy in WW II as a Corpsman on “D-Day”. He went into the funeral business after returning from the war. A Britton Home was located where the War Memorial is today.
James W. Jenkins: I worked at the funeral home for a few years during high school and college. Dicky Davis and I worked there at the same time. We helped prepare the grave site, placed flowers and registers at the home of the deceased, and carried flowers and other equipment needed for funeral services. The most challenging part of the job was backing a trailer into the shed behind the building. The shed was well-built because it had a number of notches where I miscalculated the distance. I recall the embalming room as being a sterile room at the back of the building. When older folks died at that time, family members placed coins over the deceased’s eyelids to keep them closed. There was a notable collection of coins on the shelf in the embalming room. I was often asked, “Doesn’t it disturb you to work in a funeral home?” I always found it to be a rewarding service at a very difficult time for most families. The experience of working the funerals for Annie Louise Wiley and Glenn Wiley Gaskins, my peers, was the most difficult for me as an employee. My intention was to go to Embalming School and return to Chesterfield to work with Tom (Miller) and Rudolph (Hursey)—college got in the way and that dream never came to fruition.
Clyde S. (Nick) Watson: The small building was later occupied by Glenn Rivers as an electronics repair shop. Bob Richardson operated an electronics shop at this location as well.
Elizabeth Ann Gaddy Rivers: The building that had been occupied by Craig & Co., which closed in 1959, became Glenn Rivers's Radio and TV Center. Dr. P. M. Petros built a small office building on the west side of the Radio and TV Center. That building housed his optometry practice and McLain Insurance, which was started in 1964 by John Russell McLain and Suellyn Childress McLain. In the late 60's the McLains bought Sam Presson's Insurance Agency and moved to their present location on the south side of Main Street. Dr. Petros then built the building on North Page Street that today houses Steve Wallace's law office, but later he discontinued his Chesterfield practice and worked out of his office in Cheraw. Dr. Howard Tucker then occupied the North Page Street building. After Glenn Rivers's death Bob Richardson bought the Radio and TV Center from Glenn's widow, Joan Teal Rivers.
Betty Byrd Hunley Barrett, Miss Cora and "Miss" Madge's niece and the daughter of their sister, Mary Craig Hunley, told me that her "Auntie" Madge had been married only six months when her husband died in 1912 after contacting typhoid fever from tainted well water. He was from Paxville, near Manning, SC. She also had the fever but recovered. Sadly, though, she had been too ill to attend his funeral. She died in 1972, sixty years after her husband.