by Travis Lewis
Share
This photo was taken in 1917 of Louella (Granny) (Scott) Lewis. She would have been 37 years old at the time.
By: Travis W. Lewis
July 16, 2024
Born July 15, 1880, she would have been one-hundred-forty-four years old yesterday. Lacking only one day, she would have already been two years old when Mary Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln, died in 1882. Our future “Granny”, Louella, having been born to Sam and Mary Scott in the Oak Grove community of Henderson County, Tennessee on July 15, 1880, she would be nearly eighteen when she married Lafayette Lewis in 1899 and would have already been almost twenty-one years old, with one child, when President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
By her fortieth birthday, she would have ten living children: Ezra Gecova (Covie), Ethel Louise (Maness), Orvie Lafayette, Ollie Erastus, Mary Frances (Scott), Sammie Matthew, Ruby Jewel (Scates), Lothie Beatrice (Roberts), Leatha Lucille (Duke), and Ulysses Hal. [1]
On November 28, 1921, Grandfather (Grandpa) Lafayette was mortally wounded in a neighborhood dispute near present-day Pin Oak Lodge and passed away less than three months later on February 23, 1922. His death left Granny with eight children at home, the oldest, Uncle Orvie, being seventeen, and her youngest, Uncle Hal, less than two years old.
As would have been with most other tenant farmers in that era, there was no life insurance, no government assistance, no savings, no land or property to liquidate, and no jobs with dependable income – only eight kids to feed, clothe, and shelter. Though as willing to help as possible, the several close kin in the area had their own families who were existing only on meager fare themselves, so even the most charitable among them could offer very limited help. [2]
More details of Granny’s plight are explained in my autobiography but suffice it to say that her lone assets were her line of prayer to Heaven and her eight children who she was apparently diligent to point to the Savior. And with those, they all survived to provide her with dozens of grandchildren who would bear her name and imitate her example.
Granny would bear eleven children, one of whom would die in infancy. From the ten who survived to reach adulthood would come forty-two grandchildren – twenty-four granddaughters and eighteen grandsons. Today, July 16, 2024, there remains only eleven grandchildren – nine granddaughters and two grandsons, which doesn’t seem to bode well for my cousin Bill Roberts and me.
Beginning near 1950, her family would reunite annually at the home of one of the siblings near her July 15th birthday to celebrate her and all the blessings she received from the Lord especially during all those lean years following Grandpa’s death. Her time at reunions was the nearest to Heaven Granny would know until the Lord called her home in the late afternoon of Christmas Day in 1956.
May we all be prepared to follow this persevering grandmother from whom we all sprang. And, until then, may God rest the soul of our Granny.
