On the Sidewalks of Elba

Elba will soon have new sidewalks and underground utilities (telephone, electric and cable wires will all be underground and new lighting on the streets around the court house area. It will be beautiful when this is completed in July 2008. Construction began mid April and they have 90 days to complete it - which is mid July. I am posting some photos takenMonday (April 28); one side of the sidewalks has already been taken up and just today they put the utilities on the ground and covered them with cement. I guess tomorrow they will put more cement and finish up the north side.

The old sidewalks were high off the street and you had to take steps to get up to the sidewalk. Car bumpers were always hitting the high sidewalk bank. With the new sidewalks, a section closest to the street will be lowered to avoid cars hitting them, and then you step up one step to the sidewalk near the buildings. In the center of each sidewalk, near the street, there will be small green spaces with shrubs and flowers.

You can see in the photo here of the old Elba Exchange Bank, that the old sidewalks were one width, dropping down to the street at corners and with steps in between. This will soon be changed. By the way, this old bank has been converted to a beautiful town house for a family that lives in Elba during the week and at their home on Gantt Lake at other times. You can see how they covered some of the large windows with plaster but leaving the arched outlines and the front entrance on the corner which has beautiful patterned glass on sides and over the front door. The old bank vault was torn off at the back and a garage with room overhead was added plus a penthouse on top.

Others have built apartments downtown and more are planned. When the US 84 bypass is completed around Elba, downtown will be a beautiful place to live, work, or to just stroll around and enjoy the park, courthouse square, shops, restaurants, and take walks on the levee trail.

When all of the overhead wires are gone from downtown and new lights installed, it will take on an entire new look. The new coffee house/theater "Just Folk" at the site of the old Claire Theater (next to the Jewel Box which is now closed) is almost finished and I'll post some photos soon of the interior of that beautiful place. I'm going to a concert there one night next week.

Our little town has come a long way since the two floods in the 1990's. The new levee is supposed to protect us for years to come.

Where my paternal grandparents are laid to rest

Katie Gilmer at her great-grandparents' grave

Katie and her g-g-grandfather
 James Shorter's grave

My dad's parents, James Arthur and Fannie Melissa Grimes Wilson are buried at New Ebenezer Baptist Church cemetery in the Curtis community, between Elba and Opp. My grandmother Wilson's father, James Shorter Grimes, was the first person to be buried in this cemetery. Now many of his family are buried there with him. When you enter the cemetery from the front side, you see nothing but "Grimes" graves.

My grandmother Wilson's grandparents, John W. and Julia Ann Garrett Grimes, are buried in a family cemetery near Curtis, the Holland-Grimes cemetery. For many years the cemetery was forgotten and overgrown with weeds, bushes and trees. My cousin Linda and I worked to get the small cemetery cleaned up and the tombstones cleaned. Today it is well taken care of by seasonal caretakers. At the October Grimes reunion in 2008, we plan to put a Civil War marker at the gravesite of John W. Grimes.

Grandmother Wilson's maternal grandmother , Malissia Tillis, is buried at Danley's Cross Roads. Nobody knows what happened to her husband or where he is buried.

Sophia Wyatt Wilson

Papa Wilson's mother Sophia died when he was a young man. She is buried in Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery at Bulloch, near Brantley, AL.His father, H. A. Wilson, along with my granddaddy and his twin siblings Mattie and Frank, moved from Bulloch in Crenshaw Co. to Curtis Community in Coffee Co. He later remarried and died while living in Opp, AL, where he is buried in the city cemetery there.

James Wilson was the father of H.A. Wilson and he came from GA to Crenshaw Co. Buried at Bulloch cemetery.

My g-g-grandfather, James Wilson

These are my paternal ancestors who are buried in Alabama.

Time Marches On!

Today I attended a graveside service at Evergreen Cemetery in Elba for a sister of my friend. It was a beautiful, sunny, cool morning and not a cloud in the sky.


 I got to the cemetery early and searched for the graves of my maternal great grandparents, William Cole Smith and Barbara Ann Mays Smith, his 2nd wife. I didn't know they were buried there until I started working on the Smith Family genealogy a few years ago. Over the years I have taken photos of graves of my ancestors and for this blog, I am going to post them here for a record of all of these. Today I will include my maternal grandparents and tell where they are buried.





My mother's parents were Oswald Cole and Bessie Jewel Mayberry Smith. They are buried near Danley's Cross Roads at Liberty, a country cemetery. Until a few years ago there was a Methodist Church across the road from the cemetery. The church has been moved.





Mama Smith's parents, Joel Thomas and Emma Elizabeth Mayberry, are
also buried at Liberty cemetery also. Great Grandmother Mayberry's family were Spratlings from Waverly, AL. This would be my great-great-grandparents. Papa Smith's grandfather, Joshua Cole Smith, went back to NC during the Civil War and we don't know the location of his grave, although we have pictures of his father Samuel's and grandfather John Smith's graves in Reidsville, NC.



My mother, Ruth Smith Wilson, and my dad, James Lawrence Wilson, are buried at New Ebenezer Baptist Church cemetery in Curtis community, between Elba and Opp, AL. We own the plot behind them.

Remembering Elmer Taylor

Elmer Taylor

Today I went to the Elba funeral home for visitation for the older brother of Annette Taylor Farris, one of my school classmates. James Elmer Taylor, age 89, passed away at his home in Auburn where he and his wife Grace moved a couple of years ago to be near one of their daughters. Elmer was school principal at Elba a few years after I graduated.


He was one of 3 sons of Pine Bell and Bonnie Taylor. The others are deceased. All of 7 girls are still living and came from all over the U.S. to be here for the funeral.


Here's what I remember about them: Annette was my age and we were classmates all through school. She and I were co-valedictorians when we graduated from Elba High School in 1952. I remember spending the night with her in their big white house just west of Elba (near where the new school is now located). We had fun flying down the big, pinestraw--covered hill behind their house on cardboard or wooden barrel boards. (I don't know what held the barrel boards together.) Annette's father drove a school bus, picking up students on the way to Curtis, and then bringing the older students back to Elba High School. Her mother was our lunchroom cook. I remember the delicious peach cobblers (pies) she would cook.


Annette's sister Mary Jean, just older than she, joined the Elba High School band while still a student a Curtis. She brought her trombone to school and we were all so excited to see a band instrument up close. We were even more impressed when she put the big instrument up to her lips and made sounds come out of it!! I could hardly wait to join the band someday.


Annette lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas and Jean resides in Claremont, CA. Cupidean was next and she lives in Enterprise. I remember Frances, who had red hair like mine, and who taught the 3rd grade one year at Curtis. My sister Christine was in her class. I think she only taught one year and then went back to Troy to get her degree. I remember that Chris really liked being in her class. Frances has lived in Pensacola, FL for a long time. She was at the funeral home today, recovering from a knee operation. I was pleased that she remembered me and also asked about my sister. That was in the late 1940's! Annie Laurie, another sister retired back to Elba a few years ago and lives near us. I see her often. Her daughter Judy was not much younger than Annette, and often came to school with Annette before she was old enough to go to school. I think maybe Annie Laurie was living with her parents at that time and that her husband was overseas (WWII). Today I saw Oleane and we talked about when she and my mother's sister, Nellie Faye, left Elba in the 1940's to go to work in Washington, DC during the war. They both met their husbands there and never came back south to live. There was another sister Lucille and I didn't see her today. I think she is still living and at a retirement center at Spanish Fort, FL.


I didn't know this until recently when Aunt Ida told me, that my Mama and Papa Smith lived in the same big white house and operated a dairy there before the Taylors moved there to live. Mother never told me this.


It's sad that you have an occasion like this to bring people back together. I've only seen Annette probably once or twice in 55 years. I wish we could have had more time together today but there were lots of people waiting to speak to the family at the funeral home so I came back home after a brief visit with the Taylor girls.


I'm happy that I got to visit with Elmer and Grace Taylor many times in the last few years. He was a classmate of my Aunt Ida's. They had lots of Curtis class reunions and sometimes Aunt Ida invited me to attend. When I called to tell her about Elmer's passing, she said she thinks she is one of two surviving classmates, at age 89. The other classmate is in a nursing home in FL. Aunt Ida lives alone in her home in Brewton and we visit on the telephone every Sat. morning.


A few years ago the Taylor family was honored at a Curtis School Reunion.

Learning to use a computer

After we retired in 1996 and moved from GA to Alabama, first to the family farm, and 5 years ago, selling the farm and moving to the little town of Elba, we started doing things we had always wanted to do but didn't have time. We both wanted to learn to use a computer. Our sons Ron and Bill both work with computers and were most helpful in getting us set up and offered lots of instruction in learning to use our computer. We learned to use email and at the beginning we did not have local access and in order to receive or send email, we had to dial a long distance phone number. So we didn't do email very often. Then someone opened a server site in nearby Andalusia, in an old service station, and named it Alaweb. It was still "dial up" but not long distance. The problem with that was nobody could call us if we were using the computer to send email or use the internet.


We learned to do income taxes on the computer and volunteered to do income taxes for AARP, free. Pictured here is Jim with a couple at the Elba Sr. Center where we had our "office" each spring for 8 years. IRS furnished us with laptop computers, printers, etc. and trained us. We used professional accounting software. We gave it up in 2006 to have more time at home in the spring and to be there when James got home at 2:30 pm every afternoon.


Jim wanted to edit and print a bulletin for the Rotary Club each week when he joined the Elba Rotary Club. I helped him design one and did most of the layout and we would print it on legal size paper and fold it. This went on for about 2 years and then a new member joined who had a printing shop and she started making professional bulletins.


By this time Jim was hooked on using the computer and started researching his family history. So.... we needed 2 computers. I kept the old computer and Jim got the new one. We have each updated those computers several times. We now have flat screen monitors and enjoying high speed internet through our local cable TV company. We've come a long way since 1996!!


Our sons loaded all kinds of software on our computers; some I'd never heard of, i.e. Excel, Power Point, and others. I have since learned to use both and couldn't function without these two programs. I use the tutorials to get what I need to know. We enjoy using Photoshop to edit digital photos from our cameras.


I love to do power point programs and slide shows. I have learned to scan photos to use in the slide shows. Couldn't do this without "cut and paste" that I have mastered.


Just this week Jim gave me an early Mother's Day present - an Epson projector to use with the Dell laptop computer our son Ron gave us recently. (Now we have 3 up-to-date computers and a slide projector.) We are producing two slides show; Jim is doing one for his Class of 1952 class reunion in September and I am making a slide show for a presentation for the S.A.R. on April 17th. We opened up the box with the projector two days ago and had fun figuring out all the cable connections, etc. It was exciting when we pressed "play" and voila!! There was our slide show on the screen.


I have a blog and Jim maintains our church website (http://www.elbaumc.org/). He used MS Front Page to learn how to create and maintain the website. I read a blog from a local church group last summer and decided to do one of my own. It's been so much fun remembering things from my past. I am making CD's of my blog to give to our sons and grandchildren someday.


Email is a big part of our daily life. We check it when we first get up and several times during the day. Even have this little guy announce "You have mail, madam" when email comes in during the day. We each have our own email account. Unfortunately we don't take time to write letters by hand anymore - just send email.


My philosophy is to learn all you can, everyday, while you are able. I love creating new things on the computer. It's the greatest encyclopedia in the world. Google can locate almost anything I want to know. We create maps of places we want to go and use the white pages to locate phone numbers and addresses. It's great when you want to look up a new country somewhere in the world like in Africa. I have my recipes on the computer and when I need one, I go to the computer and locate it much faster than I can by looking in my cookbooks and recipe cards.


Our 5 granddaughters all have computers of their own and when they come to visit, they enjoy playing games on our computers, sending instant messages and email or listening to music.


Picture here is our youngest, Caroline, and her sister Katie when they were spending a week with us one summer (Grandma Camp).

Who do you look like?

The above photo is the only baby picture of me that I know about. My Aunt Barbara gave it to me a few years ago. It is probably in the summer after I was born on Nov. 25, 1934. My hair was red.  I'm sitting on the hood of my daddy's car. Aunt Barbara said my parents used to take me for rides in the evenings when it was very hot and humid, so I would fall asleep.


I remember people telling me that I looked like my mother, Ruth, my grandmother, aunt, etc. when I was growing up. Even now people tell me that I look so much like my mother (who died at age 48 in 1963, when I was 29). Recently I came across some old photos of my mother and father and am posting there here.


I love the expression on my mother's face. And her little bare feet. I don't know what she has in her hands. She's probably about 2 here.


I think I probably look more like my daddy who had fat cheeks! I had red hair and neither of my parents did, but there were redheads in my father's family line of Grimes.
I really like the detail work on the dress he is wearing. My grand- mother Wilson was a great seamstress and probably make this lovely outfit. His hair was so black most of his life.


I copied this photo from a cousin Jimmy Blankenship, whose parents Ellie and Ted, lived with my great grandmother when he was young. My dad's name was written on this photo taken about 1915. 

School Days at Curtis Jr High, Elba, AL

Curtis School, grades 4,5,6 in 1946. I am in second row from top, in the middle, in front of the principal, E. C. Griffin. I was in the 6th grade and my teacher, Miss Arvie D. Fuller, is on the top row, 4th from left. Fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Doris Pinckard, 3rd on top row from left. Next to Mr. Griffin is Mrs. Jean Johnson, 5th grade teacher. The two girls on my left side were my best friends - Janice Cowen and Evelyn Jones. We are still friends and see each other often.


Several of my classmates in this photo are deceased: Ted Cowen, James Huggins, Jean Johnson, Grady Blocker, Ronald Courson, Jack Foley, Jean Griffin, Annie Myrle Archie.


"Father time took its toll on Curtis Junior High School, as it did many other country schools. The rural population slowly shifted to the cities and small towns where the factories, mills and other industries offered employment for the parents. Farming had become mechanized and many of the farm workers were no longer needed. Modern transportation provided students the opportunity to attend larger, more progressive schools. All of this meant too few students left in the country schools.


Curtis Junior High School closed at the end of the 1966-67 school term. It was indeed a sad day. A few years later, the building was destroyed by fire completely erasing all visible evidence of the school. Nothing can erase the memories in the hearts and minds of the men and women who attended school at Curtis" - taken from History of Curtis School by Jimmie Lou Cowen.


I am standing on the front steps of the old school in 1976, about 10 years after it closed.


For the last 22 years, we have had a Curtis School Reunion even though the school closed at the end of the 1966-67 school term. We meet the 2nd Sat. of October each year at a pavilion we built behind the Curtis Baptist church a few years ago. My friend Janice Cowen Hudson and I organized the first school reunion and we have been in charge every year since. We held a fundraiser to get enough money to build the pavilion behind the church. Another fundraiser was held to get an Alabama Historical Commission historical marker to erect at the site of the old school.


We always have good attendance and honor one of the families each year, as well as an outstanding student.