Part Two, continued
The 1920s and Beyond
On August 8, 1921, Michael Eggleston Minter, the fifth generation of
Minters to farm the land on Leatherwood Creek in Henry County, passed
away at the age of 67. He was followed a little over a year later by
his wife, Martha Jane (Winn) Minter, "Babe." She died October 20, 1922.
In the absence of evidence regarding their funerals, we can only
imagine what their obituaries might have said, or the scene if all of
their descendants had been able to attend the funerals. Had all of
their nine surviving children and their spouses, and their children
been in attendance, there would have been at least 24 and probably
closer to 28 adults, and some 34 children living in the homes of their
parents, ranging in age from infancy to eighteen.
That number, of course, does not include other relatives, of whom
there were many, or unrelated friends. And yet, while a large extended
family by modern standards, this was a smaller clan than might have
gathered for the funerals of Mike's parents, Silas and Jane Abigail
Minter, a generation earlier, when the number of direct descendants was
in the neighborhood of one hundred. In a way, the Minters were a kind
of microcosm of families in the U.S. undergoing the great rural-to-urban
transition of that period, and a reflection of the declining family size
that accompanied that change.
By 1923, and probably a year or two earlier, Willie and his family had left Henry County again, this time for Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he either returned to the Norfolk and Western or, if he had been working for the railroad while living in Leatherwood, accepted a transfer. They purchased farmland in Forsyth County, the area known as Broadbay (in the census, "Broadbay Township"), on the south side of Winston-Salem, where he raised tobacco while also working for the railroad. The 1930 census gave his occupation as "wreck master," the person in charge of operations in the process of cleaning up after a train wreck.
Census Listing No. 20 (1930)
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The estimate of when the family moved to Winston-Salem comes from the
fact that their daughter Maggie Jane was born in the Leatherwood area
(on or near the family farm) in 1920, and her younger sister Rachel,
Belle's last child, was born in 1923 in North Carolina.
Francis Clay Minter grew up on the farm, moved with his parents to
Roanoke during his teens where he met and married Annie Creasy, and
returned to Leatherwood some time between 1910 and 1920, probably
when his parents returned as well.
Elaine Childress recalls that Clay operated a small grocery store "on
the other side of the creek" in Leatherwood, in the early 1920s.
In May, 1925, Clay Minter died at the age of 34, leaving a widow,
Annie, with five children ranging in age from one to eleven.
Elaine believes that she heard that he was a victim of a typhoid
fever epidemic, but she is not certain of it.
In 1930, Annie was living in Martinsville at 118 Wilson Street in a home which she owned, with her five children, and a boarder. Her two oldest sons were working in the "cabinet room" of a furniture factory. Thus, within a few years of his passing, Clay's family had moved from rural farm to small town factory life. By this time, a much greater proportion of the Henry County population was making its living in knitting mills and furniture factories, and a lot fewer people were actively farming.
At some unknown date in the mid-1920s, possibly close to if not at the
same time as the move of Willie and Belle, Clarence and Marryatt moved
from Roanoke to Winston-Salem. There Clarence continued working for the
N&W, and he and his father are said to have spent a lot of time together
enjoying their favorite pastimes of hunting and baseball, according to
those who knew them, or knew those who knew them.
On June 1, 1928, tragedy struck the Minter family again, three years after the death of Clay, when Clarence, at the age of 29, was fatally scalded in a boiler accident at the N&W shops in Winston-Salem. The obituary is said to have noted that he died several hours later in a hospital after efforts to save him proved futile. Clarence and Marryatt had no children (or at least none who survived). By 1930, she had returned to her parents' home in Halifax County. According to Elaine Childress, Marryatt married again, and in that marriage she did have children.
Census Listing No. 21 (1930)
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Of the other children of Willie and Belle little is known to us, but
we are fortunate to have a photograph taken of all but one member of
the family in 1915, two other photos of Clarence, and one in which his
wife Marryatt is present, although barely discernible behind a hat
hiding much of her face.
Aside from the basic information included in the genealogical listing,
only a small amount of additional information is known to the author
concerning the children of Willie and Belle Minter.
Berta Sue and her husband Elmer Lee Draper were married in Virginia in 1918. Their first son, Elmer, was born the following year in Virginia, and they lived for a time in Roanoke upstairs in the same house with Caney and Eunice and their daughters on Orange Avenue. At some point during the 1920s they relocated to the Detroit area, where the 1930 census found Elmer working as a railroad clerk, the family living in the Royal Oak suburb north of the city. They had two sons, Elmer, Jr., 11, and Clarence, 2, the younger apparently named for Berta's brother who had died about three months before her son was born. Berta Sue (Minter) Draper died in 1967.
Census Listing No. 22 (1930)
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After Clarence, the only other son of Willie and Belle, was Charlie
Cabell, born in 1913.
The censuses of both 1920 and 1930 listed him as Charlie C.,
but he was commonly known by his middle name, Cabell.
Besides Clarence, who was fifteen years his senior, Cabell had seven
sisters, four older and three younger than he. Like other Minters before
him, Cabell worked for the Norfolk and Western, serving as an engineer
in both steam and diesel service.
He married Mary Elizabeth Willard, and they had three sons and five
daughters who now reside in central North Carolina and elsewhere and
have numerous children and grandchildren. It is believed that Cabell
and his family lived on the family farm, which at some time unknown to
us was relocated a few miles south of the original acreage, in or near
the town of Lexington. Cabell died in 1998 at the age of 85.
Two of his sons, Charles and Billy, are now breeders of Paso Fino horses,
residing on adjacent farms near Lexington.
Maggie and her husband George Barnes reside in Winston-Salem on land that has been in his family for many years, not far from Charles, Billy, and two of their sisters in Lexington. They contributed to this account of the family through oral descriptions as well as a guided tour of the Leatherwood area during the Summer of 2003.
By 1930, Jim and Rosa and their youngest son, Claude, 15, were back
on the farm in Leatherwood. After engaging in carpentry, auto mechanics,
and possibly other occupations over the years, Jim turned to "truck
farming," according to the census. Among the descendants of Mike and
Babe, in 1930 only Jim was classified as a farmer by ocupation, and he
may have been living in a form of semi-retirement. Following the death of
their parents in 1921 and 1922, there was a disagreement among the heirs
concerning the disposition of a 90-odd acre parcel of land, which may
have included the residential part of the farm itself, but that is not
clear. An agreement reached in the Circuit Court of Henry County,
October, 1923, specified that the parcel would be sold at auction to
the highest bidder. That turned out to be Jim, whose bid of $2000 took
the land at some $22 per acre, and the transfer of deed was completed
July 28, 1925 upon completion of
payment.26
Also living with Jim and Rosa was their two-year-old granddaughter,
Thelma Ansel, whose mother was their oldest daughter, Annie Eliza.
It is believed that Annie married a man named Harry Ansel, in
Baltimore, and that they had at least the one child, Thelma, about
1928. The census said Thelma was born in "Merland," and that both of
her parents were also born in "Merland," but that is at least partly
incorrect, since her mother, Annie, was born in Henry County.
Efforts to find Harry Ansel in the census proved unsuccessful. Elaine
Childress recalls that Annie married again, that her second husband was
named George Frame, and that they resided in Baltimore, but whether
they had any children, or whether Thelma returned to live with her
mother or stayed with her grandparents is
unknown.27
Census Listing No. 23 (1930)
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In 1930, Ben and Lelia were still residing in the Fieldale section
west of Martinsville, both 52 years of age. He was an automobile mechanic
by trade, according to the census, and this matches with a memory of
Elaine Childress of Ben's having had a gasoline service station on the
highway to Fieldale, today's State Route 57. In the 1920 census, Ben's
brother Jim had also been listed as an auto mechanic, while residing on
the "sand clay road" leading from Martinsville to Fieldale, which might
also have been Route 57. The coincidence seems strong enough to suggest
that the two brothers might have been in business together, or
that Ben might have taken over for Jim, perhaps buying him out or
otherwise taking his place when the older brother moved back to the farm
some time before 1930, but this is speculation.
Another vivid memory of Elaine Childress, who visited "Uncle Ben" and his family a number of times when she was young, is that they lived in a large, grand home, one that may have been a hunting lodge, and that Ben boarded and took care of hunting dogs. She recalls the home having three separate and grand staircases, a walk-in china closet, large fireplaces and hearths with dogs lying on them - on the whole an intriguing and enjoyable place to visit, and likely a great experience for her cousins. The 1930 census adds an interesting bit of confirmation: in an area in which most of the renting families in proximity were paying $5 to $7 monthly, the Minters were paying $16.
Census Listing No. 24 (1930)
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For "age at first marriage," the census shows 28 for both Ben and
Lelia, which means they married in 1906. Late to marry, they
also waited a few years before having children, but then had four
between 1912 and 1921.
Ben died of unknown cause in 1934 at the age of 56. Lelia died
June 15, 1966 in Fieldale, according to social security death records,
at the age of 88. Social security death records show all four of
the children of Ben and Lelia living into their eighties, the last place
of residence of three of them being Fieldale, and that of the fourth,
Virginia, being Morristown, Tennessee.
By 1930, Ed and Kate Slaydon and their daughters, Mildred, 15, and Blanche, 10, were living on Park Street in Martinsville. Ed, now 54, was still with the N&W as a car inspector. Their son Boyd, at age 25, was gone from the home and married, but his spouse is unknown to us. According to one source, Boyd and his wife had a son, born in 1925, who died in 1928, a couple of months short of his third birthday. No further information is available to us concerning Boyd or his family. Mildred married Clifford Martin in the 1930s, they had one daughter, and resided in Martinsville. She died in 1996, age 83; of Clifford we have no knowledge. Blanche married C. M. Stafford, and, like her sister, had only a single child, a daughter born in 1944. The Staffords have resided and operated a jewelry store in Bassett for many years. Cynthia Catherine Minter Slaydon, "Kate," passed away in January, 1954, at the age of 70. Her husband Ed died in 1967, age 89.
Also in the same home on Park Street were Kate's sister Mattie and
her husband John Varner, with their sons Edward, 11, and Eugene, 8.
John was listed in the census as a hostler with the railroad, one who
drove engines in the yard and the enginehouse for maintenance
functions.
Mattie Minter Varner died in 1960, but we don't know what became of
her husband John or their sons, Edward, Eugene, or Charles.
Census Listing No. 25 (1930)
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A few blocks away from the Slaydons and the Varners, on Wilson Street,
lived Clay's widow Annie, her four boys and one girl, ages 6 to 17, and
a boarder, a William T. Christopher, age 39. The two older boys,
Paul and Robert, as well as Mr. Christopher, worked in a furniture
factory, almost surely the Bassett Furniture Company, which by this time
had become the predominant employer in the Martinsville area, especially
for men.
Paul Francis Minter married Mildred Chatham, and they had at least
one son, Paul Douglas, known as Doug, who is married and has had
children.28
The elder Paul, who resided in Martinsville, passed away in 1994, at
the age of 81. Regarding the remaining sons and the daughter
of Clay and Annie, we have only a few basic genealogical facts
reserved for the descendancy listing(appendix), but it is worth noting
that all four married and had families.
Census Listing No. 26 (1930)
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Also within a short walk of these two houses was the family of Jim
and Rosa's second daughter, Martha Elizabeth, known as Bess, who
married James William Wagoner in 1921. They resided on College
Street in Martinsville, in 1930. "Willie" was classified in the
census that year as a laborer in a furniture factory.
The Wagoners had at least three children who were listed in the
census as Earl, Rose, and James William, Jr.
More children may have been born later.
Unfortunately, we know nothing of what became of any of the members of
this family, except that Bess died in 1975 and was buried in Roselawn
Burial Park in Martinsville.
Census Listing No. 27 (1930)
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James Michael Minter, known as Mike, married three times, having two
children with each of the first two wives, each of whom died, and he
died in 1961.29
Elaine Childress believes that Mike, like his older sister Annie, lived
in Baltimore, but efforts to find him in the census of 1930 in Maryland
or Virginia, or anywhere else in the U.S., based on the Ancestry.com
indexing system, were unsuccessful.
Dillard Minter, or "Dee," moved to Detroit where the 1930 census
found him at age 23, single, residing as a boarder on Wabash Avenue,
in an occupation described as "testing marine motors." He married Ruth
Marion Peet and they had two children. He died in 1993 in Lakeland,
Florida (per Social Security Death Index).
Horatio Daniel, known as "Rashe" (pronounced with a long a, as in face; the spelling is a guess), married Louise T. Faulkner about 1928 in New Jersey, and is thought to have resided in that state for some time. Social security records show that he received his social security number in New Jersey before 1951. Rashe and Louise had at least one child, Mary (or Rosemary) Minter, who was born in 1940. In 1944, Rashe took ownership of the 90-acre parcel that had been in his father's possession since the 1925 settlement, and in the mid-1960s he sold it to the Blue Ridge Soil Conservation District. (See Note 26.) After Louise died in 1973, Rashe married again, two years later, at the age of about 66, West Virginia native Mary Joan Rohr. At some date unknown to us, he, or they, are believed to have moved into the old "home place" where Rashe resided until his death in 1995. There remains, however, a degree of uncertainty regarding the status, the location, and the inhabitants of the house.
By 1930, some branches of the Minter generation that was the children of Mike and Babe had relocated to other states, including Ohio, Maryland, and North Carolina, or to Roanoke. But Martinsville and the surrounding area remained the predominant place of residence of the extended Minter family. Residing in the Martinsville area at the time were six Minter and allied families, and those families included a total of 17 children still living at home.
- Jim and Rosa on the farm in Leatherwood, with one child at home.
- Ben and Lelia in the big house in Fieldale, with four children.
- Kate and Ed Slaydon (with two children), and Mattie and John Varner (also with two) sharing a house in Martinsville.
- Clay's widow Annie Minter, with five children, also in Martinsville; and
- Jim and Rosa's daughter Bess and her husband and three children.
Aside from the branch now settled in Winston-Salem, the other principal location of Minters at this time was Roanoke. George and Cora resided there the longest of anyone in the family, from before 1910, probably as early as 1906, through the late 1920s. At the 1910 census they had been married four years and already had two children. By the end of the decade they had relocated to Portsmouth, Ohio, where he remained with the Norfolk and Western, now as an inspector, a job which is said to have resulted in a great deal of travel on his part.
Census Listing No. 28 (1930)
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All but the last of their children, those noted in the 1930 census,
were said to have been born in Virginia, the most recent of whom was
Fred, in 1925.
Thus, the family appears to have moved to Portsmouth after Fred's birth
and before the 1930 census.
Their home was at the northern edge of Portsmouth, far from the
railyards, in what has been described by Elaine Childress as a large,
fine home overlooking the Scioto River.
In 1930, the family at home consisted of nine children, missing only
the oldest, Sterling, who was married and still in Roanoke, and the
youngest of the family, Sarah Jane, who had not yet arrived.
In 1925, George and Cora's first son, Sterling, married Pearl (Sledd)
Moore, a widowed 26-year-old mother of three. The 1930 census
found Sterling and Pearl living in the home of her parents on Shenandoah
Avenue in Roanoke, in the same area of the city, the Northwest, where
some of the Minters had resided earlier, including his own family prior
to 1920. At the time of the census, they had a two-month old
daughter, named Lillian, along with three children from Pearl's first
marriage, Howard, Dewey, and Violet Moore, ages 15, 12, and 10.
In October, 1931, Sterling was killed in an automobile accident, a few
months before the birth of his son, Sterling Mike Minter, Jr.
The son, who was known as Mike, was a successful businessman in the
Roanoke area, and died in 2003.
30
Census Listing No. 29 (1930)
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The next generation of Minters was also represented in Roanoke in
1930 by the first son of Jim and Rosa, Lewis Jennings Minter.
Born in 1896, Lewis married Ada Lee Franklin in 1917, and they settled
in the Cave Spring area south of the city. They had five children
between 1919 anad 1927. Lewis was a machinist with the Norfolk and
Western at the time of the 1930 census. Lewis and Ada Lee later moved
to Florida where she died in 1970 and he in 1973.
Census Listing No. 30 (1930)
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Lelia and Charlie Turner and their daughter Christine resided on Chapman
Avenue, in the Southwest section of Roanoke. In 1927, at the age of
16, Christine finished high school and entered Hollins College. If
not the first, she was one of the first of the grandchildren of Mike and
Martha Jane Minter to attend college. At the time of the 1930 census, she
was 19 and finishing her junior year. Also living in the Turner home was
a roomer, Sallie McLain, a 29-year-old stenographer whom Elaine Childress
recalls was "just like family."
On May 26, 1932, Charles Henry Turner died of a heart attack at the
age of 51. Lelia was 39 at the time, and her daughter Christine
was 21 and a year out of college. Mr. Turner's passing left widow and
daughter to face the deepening Depression of the 1930s with limited
resources in those days before Social Security.
As a practical measure, as recalled by Elaine Childress, they rented
out part of their house on Chapman Avenue.
A year and a half later, in December, 1933, Christine married Alva Chamberlayne, son of Edward P. and Frances F. Chamberlayne of Campbell Avenue, in the Highland area, one street down from Chapman. A 1931 graduate of Roanoke College, Alva was teaching in a rural school near Winchester, so Christine left home for good about the end of 1933. At the end of the school year Alva and Christine relocated to Arlington where both took jobs in government service.
Sometime in 1934 or early 1935, Lelia sold the house on Chapman Avenue in Roanoke and came to live with her daughter, who was by then expecting her first child. She remained with the Chamberlaynes the remainder of her life, after Arlington, briefly in Portsmouth, before spending more than two decades in Norfolk. After a particularly enjoyable visit with her brother George in 1940, Lelia returned as an avid fan of Ohio State University in college football and the Cincinnati Reds in baseball. Upon joining her daughter and family, Lelia went to work as a seamstress, and remained in that occupation until she was disabled in 1962 as a result of a clothing fire.
While working as an auditor in the 1940s, Al Chamberlayne studied law and accounting at night for several years and in 1950 became a Certified Public Accountant. He maintained a practice in Norfolk until his retirement in 1974. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1986. Christine had a son, named Charles Hartwell ("Skip") in 1935, then after eight years had three more children in five years: Donald Wayne (Don) in 1943, Dorothy Sue (Dottie) in 1946, and Martha Lynn (Marcie) in 1948. In the 1950s Christine was a rose gardener and an active member of the Tidewater Rose Society, and she taught piano to neighborhood children for a number of years. In 1957 she entered the teaching profession and taught sixth, and later fifth, grade in Norfolk Public Schools for some twenty years, retiring in 1977. She currently resides with her daughter in Webster, New York.
Census Listing No. 31 (1930)
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(Photos of Christine)
Caney and Eunice Minter and their two daughters were living on Orange
Avenue, NW, during this period.
The 1930 census found Elaine nearing her 15th birthday and her sister
Jane having just turned eleven.
Their parents were both 34, and Eunice's sister Oney May, 31, was
still with the family working as a photo finisher in a photography
enterprise. Caney, or "Pop," as he was widely known, was a yard
conductor with the N&W at Shaffer's Crossing, as he had been a decade
earlier (census of 1920), and in his later years he was station master
at the downtown station in Roanoke. Caney also was active in a variety
of interests and pursuits, including various sporting and fraternal
endeavors.
He had, according to his daughter Elaine, a strong sense of the
importance of the family, in both the immediate and the larger sense,
and sustained in his family the habit of visiting and keeping in
touch with "kin."
In large part because of these "Sunday visits," Elaine knew all of
her cousins and she has taken pleasure in writing out their names as
she knew as a child, some 45 first cousins, including herself.
(See Peer Chart: 45 first cousins by year of birth
and parents.)
John Caney "Pop" Minter devoted his entire working life, some fifty-odd years, to the Norfolk and Western Railway. Beginning as a "water boy" at about 14 in Roanoke, he spent most of his career as a yard conductor, and in later years as Station Master at the main passenger station in Roanoke. In 1960, the year of his 50th anniversary of service to the railroad, he was on sick leave following a heart attack suffered about 1959, and he retired some time thereafter.
Aside from his orientation to family, "Pop" was very much a sportsman. He enjoyed golf, bowling, hunting, and fishing, and was an accomplished skeet shooter. During the 1940s or early 1950s, he was a member of the five-man Shenroke Skeet Club team which retired the Clark Challenge Trophy at the Homestead in Hot Springs upon winning three consecutive championships.
The Masonic Order and its auxiliaries for women and young girls played an important part in the social and community life of the J. C. Minters. In his later years Caney served as Deputy Grand Master of the Masonic Order of the Commonwealth of Virginia, a position which, according to his daughter, gave him great pleasure as he traveled the state attending functions at various lodges. Eunice was a member of the Eastern Star, the ladies auxiliary organization of the Masons, and both her daughter Jane and her granddaughter Judie were members of Job's Daughters in their teens.
In December, 1938, Martha Elaine Minter, age 23, married George David
"Buddy" Childress, a commercial and barnstorming "stunt" pilot operating
out of Roanoke Airport, but also working for the Norfolk and Western.
Buddy joined the Civil Aeronautics Administration in 1940 and the couple
relocated to Dallas, and from there to Tulsa in 1940, Fort Worth in 1943,
where their son David was born, and Washington, D.C. about 1948. After a
few years at the D.C. office of the renamed Federal Aviation
Administration, Buddy was "loaned" to the State Department as an aviation
advisor, and served tours in Panama from 1953 to 1956, and Bolivia from
1956 through 1959, where they resided near the La Paz Airport at an
elevation of some 13,000 feet. They returned to the Washington area in
1960 where Buddy finished his career, retiring in 1976.
In addition to the stimulating diplomatic life abroad and in Washington, Elaine and Buddy enjoyed golf, entertaining, and keeping up with family in the tradition passed on to her by her parents. Buddy died in 1983 at the age of 74 and Elaine returned to Roanoke. She continues to maintain the importance of family relations and has contributed substantially to the accumulation of information provided in this outline of the Minter family.
Elaine's younger sister, Nannie Jane, married William Kenneth Dyer of
Roanoke in June, 1937, just a few weeks shy of her high school graduation.
At her marriage she dropped the name Nannie and kept Minter as her
middle name, as had her cousin Christine and her Aunt Lelia Turner,
and as her older sister would do a year and a half later.
Jane and William, or "Bill," had two daughters, Judieth Elaine, born
in 1941, and Nancy Ellen, born in 1944. The Dyers resided on a few
rolling acres in the southwest section of Roanoke County in the area
now known as Oak Grove, where Bill worked until the mid-1950s for
Oren Roanoke Corp., and then for General Electric, and the girls grew
up on the outskirts of Salem.
Jane Dyer passed away October 21, 1955, at the age of only 36, leaving a husband and daughters 14 and 11. A few years later, William married Minnye Irene Feather, granddaughter of Lucian Trout, Eunice's brother, with whom Caney and Eunice had shared a house on Orange Avenue around 1920. Bill and "Renie" had three children, and Bill's first and second families became and have remained personally close. Judie and Seth Oginz, and Nancy and Walter "Butch" Manning, reside in adjacent homes in a mountain setting near Roanoke, and their Aunt Elaine Childress, a close companion, resides only a few miles away.
Census Listing No. 32 (1930)
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By the 1950s, the children of Mike and Babe Minter, and their spouses,
were reaching old age and time was beginning to have its way with
them. Of the seventeen members of whom we know the date of
passing, only three had died before mid-century, but over the next two
decades the end would come for all but Clay's widow Annie, and with her
death in 1974 the chapter on this generation was closed.
The listing of deaths in the Family Record on the next page
covers only this and not succeeding generations, and it brings the
story of this branch of the Minters of Henry County, as we know it,
to a close.
Photographs Descendancy Listing (v.2)
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