James Henry Collie (1845-1923) on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, circa 1920. 
Photo courtesy of Thomas Mastin Collie Jr.

Some families shape a community generation after generation. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, relatives of Carter Collie (1812-1884) could be found serving as Chatham’s wheelwrights, merchants, jailors, postmasters, hotel proprietors, and public officials. During the time of the 1850 census, Carter repaired and constructed wagon wheels as a wheelwright near Whitmell that farmers depended upon. Within a few years his nephew George T. Richardson lived close by and learned the wheelwright trade too. Within Pittsylvania County there are numerous descendants of Carter’s sister, Lucy Collie (1802-1889), who married Elijah Richardson. During the 1860s and 1870s, Carter involved himself with the local administration and became superintendent of the county poor house. By 1880 he served as county jailor. The federal census recorded the four prisoners held in the old jail under his supervision: two farmers, a cook, and a man whose occupation was listed as “thief.” Carter and his wife Gideon “Giddy” Hall raised seven children who remained active in the community. 

Carter’s oldest son, James Henry Collie (1845-1923) became a well-known resident of Chatham. In 1863, when he was eighteen years old, James traveled to Danville to enlist in the Confederate army. While serving with Company D of the 38th Virginia Infantry, he rose to the rank of second corporal and survived the war. Afterward, he returned to Pittsylvania County and ran a dry goods store near the communities Ringgold and Laurel Grove. He eventually moved to Chatham where he served as the county sheriff for two terms and later as a justice of the peace. His wife, Mary Alice Williams, was a great-granddaughter of General Joseph Martin of Martinsville and a granddaughter of Capt. James Mastin Williams of Peytonsburg. Their son James Williams Collie (1873-1926) is notable for the construction of Chatham’s Collie Hotel (27 South Main St) in 1920, which was later known as the Powell Hotel. He was also one of the founders of the First National Bank and served as a town councilman. 

Carter Collie’s daughters, Eliza Ann Collie (1846-1908) and Judith Shelton Collie (1852-1918) both married men named George Giles. One of Judith’s sons, Grief C. Giles, served as Chatham’s postmaster between 1922 and 1929. Two more of Carter’s daughters, Nancy Jennings Collie (1855-1924) and Sarah Jane Collie (1858-1918), married two sons of Isaac Luden White Sr. (who were seemingly unrelated to Dr. Rawley White of Chatham). Nancy’s husband, Alpheus Adolphus White, was a merchant in town during the 1880s, but his life was cut short at the age of thirty-three. She later kept a boarding house in Chatham as of the 1910 census. Her sister Sarah’s husband, Benjamin Stuart White, was a skilled blacksmith and saddler who flourished in Chatham. He owned the B.S. White & Son Harness and Saddle Shop, which also repaired shoes “while you wait” as was painted legibly on the front of the building. The part-brick-part-frame shop was situated approximately where 37 and 33 Main Street are now, next to the present Pittsylvania County Sheriff’s Office. Behind the building (now the parking lots near the jail) was an arrangement of feeding sheds serving as the town’s central livery stable, as seen in a Sanborn map from 1902. 

The sixth child of Carter Collie was Mary Elizabeth Collie (1861-1919), or as she was called, “Mollie” Collie. She married William Edward Goolsby of Nelson County, Virginia, who became a depot agent in Chatham by 1880. She served as Chatham’s postmistress between 1896 and 1903. The final and youngest of the siblings was her brother William Robertson Collie (1867-1940). He married Bessie Belle Spencer, but she passed away in 1895 at the age of twenty-two. He later remarried to Sallie Coleman Smith, a granddaughter of Col. Coleman Dalton Bennett and a descendant of the Ward family. William settled in Richmond where he involved himself in several businesses, including as a tobacco buyer in 1920. 

There are many more accomplishments and family connections that could be explored, but those listed above are among the most recognizable to modern residents of Pittsylvania County. During the first few decades of the 1900s, everyone in Chatham would have been familiar with the Collie family. Many of the above were laid to rest at Chatham Burial Park.