And now for the great-grandparents on my Dad's side of the family.  First, I have found three notices of my father's mother's father,Joseph Fultz.Two are from the Staunton Spectator and one is from the Lexington Gazette. Each one a little different from the other.  They are followed by my father's mother's mother's obituary, which I found in the Richmond-Times Dispatch.  I have found many obituaries from all over the state in the Richmond paper.

 

 

 I also have found my father's father's father's obituary in the Staunton Spectator.  I may have written about this earlier.  However, I haven't been able to locate his father's father's mother's obituary.  Still looking...

My great-granparents' obituaries

Two more obituaries from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  These are two of my great-grandparents.  They were my mother's mother's parents.  My grandmother is referenced in the bottom one as Mrs. J.Graham Barnett.  I have written about them before.  They are both buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond.

These are two more of my grandparents.  This time my mother's father's parents. I don't know exactly which paper printed the first one.  I found it photocopied with some records that my aunt gave me.  It seems to come from a Danville paper but I haven't been able to find it on microfilm.  I also have not been able to locate a record of his grave in Oakhurst cemetery.  The second one was in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It references my grandfather J. Graham Barnett.

To followup on yesterday's entry, these are the obituaries for my maternal grandparents. They are both from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  As you can see, my Mom's family has used Joseph Bliley Funeral Home for years.

My grandfather died before I was born.  In fact, my sister is the only one of the four of us who is counted among the grandchildren in his obituary. I know about him, but I didn't know him.

However, I do remember my grandmother.  She was the only one of my grandparents that I knew. She used expressions like "two shakes of a lamb's tail" and "I'll ramsquizzle you through a buzzard's wing."  And she always brought life savers with her on her visits.  She also desperately wanted me to stop biting my fingernails.  She bought me a little kit containing a file and clippers.  She told me that biting my nails would make my knuckles knobby.  None of that worked.

I remember staying at her house when I was little.  She later lived with my Aunt Ruth and I would see her when I stayed with them, which was usually a week or so in the summer.  My first plane trip was with her from Winston-Salem to Richmond when I was about 12 years old.  I was in college when she died and I flew from Raleigh to Richmond for her funeral.  It was probably the second time I had flown.

 

Newspapers are a wonderful source of information about ancestors.  I spent a couple of hours this week looking for my grandparents' obituaries and found them!  I didn't even know whether they existed. The two above are for my father's parents.

John A Alexander's obituary lists his wife as Jeanette, but it was Janet.  It also lists one of his sisters as Mrs. George Lipscomb, when her husband actually went by Wiley (he was George Wiley Lipscomb).  And his sister Mary was always Midge to the family.  Also, I'm fairly certain that the minister was Rev. Borthwick.  So it is loaded with misinformation. Nonetheless, the date and cause of death match information on the death certificate, so they got that right. The obituary appeared in the 31 January 1923 issue of the Lexington Gazette.

On the other hand, Janet Alexander's obituary is factually correct all the way through. Her obituary appeared in the 14 April 1954 issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Lexington Gazette may also have run an obituary for her, but it was not as readily available in the Library of Virgina.  That will have to wait for another day.