A to Z April Challenge: V is for Virginia

“We need to get together more often and not at a funeral.” How many times have you and a cousin said that? Funerals are much like a family reunion. You can learn a lot about a family just by looking at who showed up. Using my grandparents’ guest books and sympathy cards, I’ll be exploring “Who came to the funeral?”

is for Virginia Lucille Griffith Melton. She attended my grandfather’s funeral in 1963 along with her brothers John and Clyde Griffith.

 

Virginia was born in June 1906 to Hubert and Bettie Griffith of Shenandoah, Virginia. She was the last of six children. While her brothers operated the H. F. Griffith & Son general store followed by Griffith Brothers Store, Virginia attended Harrisonburg Teachers College. She even made the “Personals” column of the campus newspaper The Breeze in October 1924 when her brother John came to visit.

 

Virginia graduated and began teaching in Page County. Her marriage to Ivor “Tuck” Melton was announced without the fanfare accompanying many wedding announcements. Theirs was kept secret.

from GenealogyBank
Richmond Times Dispatch 13 May 1934

Why, I don’t know. There was a time when teachers were forbidden to marry; however, 1934 surely was a more enlightened time accustomed to teachers having a normal personal life outside the classroom.

snipped from Google Maps

Ivor and Virginia rented an apartment in this charming Victorian on Second Street for $12 a month. By 1940, they had two children, Bettye Lynn and Lane.

Virginia and Tuck are buried in the Methodist Church Cemetery in Shenandoah, Virginia.

Photo courtesy Jan Hensley

Don’t vacillate now.  Why don’t you venture over to the venerable vanguard of verisimilitude in the vernacular at the A to Z April Challenge to view a veritable vortex of veracious verbalization before they vanish?

© 2015, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

A to Z April Challenge: G is for Griffith

My theme for the A to Z April Challenge is “In-Laws and Out-Laws – Friends of the Family.”  I will be researching friends, colleagues, neighbors - those people who came and went touching my family’s lives in both small and large ways. 

is for Griffith.  In particular Vernon Clyde Griffith.  I can still hear my grandparents referring to “Clyde Griffith” although I don’t remember a thing about what they said.  But Clyde was a pallbearer for my grandfather’s brother, Millard Davis in 1951, so he must have been important to my family.

The Griffith family lived in Shenandoah, Virginia in the early to mid 1900s, just like my grandparents and great-grandparents and other relatives.  Millard and Clyde were roughly the same age, so they were probably school chums as well.

Scanned from
Shenandoah: A History of Our Town
And Its People

Clyde’s father Hubert was a carpenter with an entrepreneurial spirit.  He opened a grocery store in 1911, and prior to World War I, Clyde was owner and manager for the store known as H.F. Griffith & Son. 

When Clyde joined the war effort, his brother Gilbert filled in at the store.  After the war, the brothers bought a second store and changed the name to Griffith Brothers.  Their business became known for good service, that “efficiency, courtesy, quality, and a large and well-picked stock of goods with right prices.”

Griffith Brothers General Merchandise
Scanned from
Shenandoah:  A History of Our Town
And Its People

In 1930 Clyde and his wife of 10 years, plus son and daughter, lived on Sixth Street, just a couple doors down from my mother and grandparents, and across the street from his friend Millard.

In 1940, Clyde was listed as postmaster.

Clyde (and his brother) gained the respect of the community for practicing four-square principles of business and promoting civic improvement.  He served on the school board, served on the Board of Directors of the bank, taught the Men’s Bible Class of the Lutheran Church, and even served as mayor of Shenandoah for a time.

Clyde is second from the left, back row
Scanned from Shenandoah:  A History of Our Town and Its People

Clyde is buried in a family plot in the Coverstone Cemetery in Shenandoah, Virginia, the resting place of so many of my family members.

Photo courtesy of Jan Hensley, findagrave.com

Gee, can’t get enough?  Then gallop over to A to Z April Challenge for a glimpse at more glorious grins and giggles.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.