Gracie Allen Van Pelt Royall Barnett.  I remember my grandmother telling me she had a really long name and she would recite the list.  She is the only grandparent that I remember.  Of course, when I knew her, she didn't look like she looks in this picture!  She was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1885.  She married Samuel Moorman Royall, who died shortly after the birth of their daughter, Eleanor. 

I recently discovered through Census records that Grandma then lived with her mother's sister, Grace Brown. She worked at Miller & Rhoads department store to support herself and her daughter.  She later married John Graham Barnett (my grandfather) and had three more children.  So that's how she got all those names. 

I remember visiting Grandma in Richmond at her house on Florida Avenue.  It was a really cool house.  She had a swinging door between the kitchen and dining room; a shower in the basement, which had a dirt floor; and an upstairs back porch with stairs going down to the yard.  She also had a goldfish pond in the side yard and lots of flowers.

Every summer I would go to Richmond and stay with her or one of my aunts.  It was nice to be the center of attention and I got to experience city life.  A regular thing was to go to Miller & Rhoads Tea Room for lunch where my Aunt Eleanor was the hostess.  They had children's menus in different shapes (one was a rabbit mask) and escalators! When I went with her to the Methodist Church, she sang all the songs without looking at the hymnal because she knew them all by heart.

Grandma would come visit us on the farm, too.  She always had lifesavers in her pocket that she would share (the 5-flavor kind); cherry & lime are still my favorites.  She went to great lengths to get me to stop biting my fingernails.  She gave me a manicure kit & tried to bribe me with $5, but I just couldn't quit. 

There are several sayings that I attribute to her and all the siblings & cousins agree.  She would say that something would be ready in "two shakes of a lamb's tail."  I've heard others use that expression, too. But one expression she would use that I have never heard anyone else say was "I'm going to ramsquizzle you through a buzzard's wing!"  This was NOT a good thing.  We didn't know what it meant; but it sounded awful and when she said that, we knew we were in trouble!

She also came to visit us after we moved to North Carolina.  She would fly down and back.  In fact, my first airplane ride was flying from Winston-Salem to Richmond on a plane with her when I was about 12.

Gracie Allen Van Pelt Royall Barnett died in 1972 when I was in college. She is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond.