At the next residence, visitation number 88, lived James Silas Minter and his family.  In 1893, Jim had married Rosa Etta Pace, daughter of Joseph Daniel and Frances "Fannie" Stultz of Henry County.  By 1900 they had three children, two of whom were still living, their first, Charles, having died in infancy in 1895.  Lewis was three and Annie Eliza one, and in addition Jim and Rosa Etta had taken in Rosa's younger sister Bertha, age 11, who was attending school. 

        During the early years of the 20th century the tobacco industry, long the mainstay of the Henry County economy, all but collapsed in the area.  A feature article in The Roanoke Times in August, 2002, written by Matt Chittum, on the rise and fall of the textile industry of the Martinsville area, described the transition from tobacco to textiles and furniture making in the early years of the 20th Century:

        In 1907, Benjamin, the third son in the birth order, married Lelia Anne Stultz, older sister of Sadie, and a daughter of James Achilles Stultz and Mary Catherine Winn.  At the taking of the 1910 census, Ben and Lelia were residing in Greenwood, South Carolina, where he was a traveling tobacco products salesman.  Ben and Lelia married late, when she was 27 and he was 29, and three years later they still had no children.  In the culture of rural southside Virginia in the early twentieth century, that was a bit unusual, but, as will be seen, Ben and Lelia would not remain childless for long.

        The census of 1910 described Mike as a house carpenter by occupation, while Ed Slaydon and Clay Minter were said to be working for the railroad, Ed as a car builder and Clay as a locomotive fireman.  Thus, after the family had been in tobacco for generations, now even the elder male of the clan had left the farm for other work in the city, and most of the family had shifted from rural agricultural to small town or small city life working in some of the dominant trades of the day, the principal employer being the Norfolk and Western Railway.

        About ten blocks away, at 1330 Loudon Avenue, NW, second son Willie, and his family were living in the same house with younger brother George and his wife and two young boys.  Willie and Belle had a boy, 11, and three girls, ages three, seven, and nine in 1910.  In 1905 or 1906, George married Cora Lillian Richardson, daughter of Richard and Eliza Susan (Eggleston) Richardson of the Leatherwood community.  Cora's grandmother on her father's side was Nancy Minter, sister of George's grandfather, Silas Abner Minter.  Interestingly, two of Cora's brothers had the given names George Clay and Canie, names later used by Mike and Martha Jane.  Both Willie, 34, and George, 22, worked for the Norfolk and Western and had the same occupation, categorized in the census as "repairs cars" for the railroad.

        With the two youngest children still in the home, the youngest of those who had left was Nannie Lelia.  In 1909, at the age of 16, she married Charles Henry Turner, son of James A. and Martha Jane Turner of the Reed Creek section of the county, a few miles west of Dyer's Store.  Born in 1880 or 1881, Charlie, as he was known, was 29 when he married and already established as a building contractor, as the 1910 census showed, in business for himself.  At the taking of the census, on April 19, 1910, Lelia and Charlie were residing as boarders at 511 Second Avenue, NW, a few blocks east of her brothers Willie and George.  She went by the name Lelia, and at her marriage dropped the name Nannie and kept Minter as her middle name.

        In 1910, only the two youngest of the nine children of Mike and Martha Jane Minter, Caney and Mattie, were still at home with their parents, and that home was now in Roanoke, not far from the Norfolk and Western Railway yards where three of the brothers, plus Kate's husband, Ed Slaydon, were employed.  The seven other children were all married, and all but Jim and Ben were living within a short distance of each other in Roanoke.  At the taking of the census Mike and Babe had fourteen grandchildren, ranging in age from thirteen down to less than a year.

        Most likely, Clay and Annie were living in the second house on the farm, since they and his parents, Mike and Babe, were only a single number apart in the census taker's visitation order.  Elaine Childress recalls that "Uncle Clay" ran a small grocery store about this time.  Apparently Clay farmed, too, as the 1920 census gave farming, rather than any kind of merchant status, as his occupation.  The grocery store might have come later, and might have been merely a supplement to his main endeavor of farming.

        Willie and Belle and their four "middle" children who were still at home, were also in Leatherwood, not far from the others. Willie's occupation in the census was farmer, and he owned the land he was farming, and whether he still worked for the railroad is unknown. Clay was listed as a renter of the land he farmed, presumably from his parents.  Thus, three Minter males in Leatherwood in 1920 were farming, although it is unknown what kind of farming they were doing.  The best guess is that it was some kind of truck farming rather than tobacco.

        Jim and Rosa and their five children in 1920 were living in the town of Martinsville, on what, in difficult handwriting appears to say "Clay" (Road).  Jim's occupation was given as "mechanic, auto garage." Their two oldest children, Lewis and Annie Eliza, were both gone, but the other five, ranging from 17 down to five, were in the home, all but the oldest and the youngest attending school.  Two of their children, Annie Eliza and Horatio Daniel, had the names of Jim's younger sister and brother who had lived only short lives, Horatio, who died in 1882 after living only a year, and Annie, who died in 1887 at the age of seven.

        Outside of Martinsville, apparently on the same "Sand Clay Road" as Jim and Rosa were Ed and Kate Slaydon and their three children.²⁴ Ed, 42, was still with the railroad, working at this time as a railcar inspector.  During the past decade they had lost two children, Thelma, in 1911 at age two, and another daughter, Florence Elizabeth, who was born in 1917 and died in 1919.  Two other daughters born during the decade were Lelia Mildred in 1914 and Nannie Blanche in 1919.

        Ben and Lelia were living in the Fieldale area by 1920, and there is reason to believe they were back in Virginia, and probably in Fieldale, as early as 1910 or 1911, since their first child, Lelia Anne, or Anna, was born in January, 1912, in Virginia.  By 1920 they had had three of what would be a total of four children.  Ben was still making a living as a traveling salesman, but the 1920 census did not show the category of industry.

        While several branches of the family that had been in Roanoke in 1910 had returned to Henry County by 1920, several others remained, including those of George, Lelia, Caney, and Willie's son Clarence.  No longer renting in the Melrose area where his and other branches of the family had resided in 1910, George in 1920 was a homeowner in a location outside the city limits known in the census as the "Big Lick" district.  From the definition of the district provided at Ancestry.com, it appears that the location was near today's Route 419, between the crossing points of Route 11 to the south and Route 11A, or possibly Kesler's Mill to the north.²⁵   Street names were not given in the census, which suggests that the area was semi-rural, probably then going through conversion to residential development.  Most of the heads of households in this area in the census were with the railroad in one capacity or another.  While George worked as a foreman for the railroad, Cora stayed home with seven children between one and thirteen.

        In 1914, at the age of 19, Caney married Eunice Alice Trout, daughter of John William and Lottie E. Trout of the Melrose section of Roanoke. In 1920, they and their two young daughters, plus Eunice's sister, Oney May Trout, were residing upstairs above Eunice's brother, Lucian, and his wife and daughter, on Melrose Avenue.  Caney's occupation was given in the census as "conductor," which, according to his daughter, Elaine Childress, is to be understood as a yard conductor at the Shaffer's Crossing rail yard.  Oney May, who worked as a photo developer, lived with Caney and Eunice throughout their married lives.

        Charles and Lelia Minter Turner were living on Chapman Avenue, SW, in 1920, in a house that he built, south of the railyards which dissected the city on an east-west line from Vinton to Salem.  Lelia and "Mr. Turner," as she sometimes called him, had only one child, Christine, who was nine years old in 1920.  Charles Turner remained in business for himself as a building contractor, as he had been at least since the taking of the census of 1910.

        A few houses up the street lived Willie and Belle's son Clarence and his wife, Marryatt Minter.  She was a daughter of Millard and Nannie Willard of the Red Bank section of Halifax County, southeast of the Town of South Boston.  Clarence was working for the Norfolk and Western in 1920 as an apprentice boilermaker.

        The last member of the family of Mike and Babe remaining to be located in 1920 is the youngest of the siblings, daughter Mattie Jane, born in September, 1898.  Mattie and her husband of about two years, John W. Varner, were residing at the time of the 1920 census in Newport News, Virginia, where John worked at the shipyard.  Of John we have no further information, his family having eluded us in the census.  Their son Edward (written "Edwin" by the census taker) was a year old at the time.