My grandparents Jones lived in the town of Cairo, in southwest Georgia, just north of Talahassee, Florida. Grandfather, Walter C. Jones, was a Methodist minister and pecan nursery grower; grandmother, Martha Melvina Powell (Mellie) Jones, was a homemaker for their five children, including my father.
I recently uncovered a packet of letters from Grandmother to my parents in the 1930s and 40s, giving me a chance to learn more about them from her own words. I’ve pieced together a (fragmentary) history of their lives in a booklet I just finished.
One letter describes the burning down of their home (no one was hurt) in 1934, written that same night to her Ohio family to assure them that they were safe. Later letters describe their work to find a new place to live and still keep up their income source from farming at their burned out home.
A letter in 1944 describes the town’s prayers and relief at the news of D-Day.
All the letters are full of daily life, relating the news from Georgia and reflecting on what she hears from my parents in Ohio about their lives. The prices of pecans, the weather (surprisingly cold in the winter, even in southern Georgia), Grandfather’s declining health, church services, family news.
I’ve been blessed by the chance to know these grandparents, a grandfather I never met, and a grandmother I saw on one visit in April of 1950, when I was 3 years old. Here’s my record of that visit, with my mother and grandmother.
You can access the booklet I wrote with more photos at the Family History tab on my website.