This program centers on Howard Kester who was born and raised near Martinsville in the early twentieth century and later moved with his family to Beckley, West Virginia as a teenager. Those early years in and around Henry County, followed by his experiences in West Virginia coal country, were formative. Seeing firsthand the exploitation of […]

Violence and lawlessness plagued late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Virginia, and with no bureau of investigation or state police force, the Old Dominion relied on the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to solve a multitude of crimes. Formed by William G. Baldwin and Thomas L. Felts, the agency, headquartered in Roanoke, was charged with investigating some of the […]