This clipping of an obituary for Lydia Meeks Grissom Coley is found in a scrapbook kept by Savannah Powell Farmer (1908-1996). I have not been able to source the newspaper or its date of publication, but it does not appear to have come from the Wilson Daily Times.
Many thanks to Levolyre Farmer Pitt for sharing her mother’s scrapbook!
UPDATE, 4 September 2025: the clipping was from 30 March 1946 Norfolk Journal and Guide!
Many thanks to you for your outstanding and tireless work! To see the face of my great grandmother is truly a miracle!
My mother, then Patricia Garner, daughter of Vivian Garner, was “kidnapped” by her Aunts Dorothy Parker and Ruth Ward from a family in Pittsburgh that she lived with while her mother was building a career in Chicago with the U.S. government.
They brought her to Wilson to live with her grandmother Lydia Weeks Grissom Coley – she was about ten when her grandmother passed away.
It was during the funeral of my own grandmother Vivian Garner – that I learned of a shameful secret of Lydia Meeks Grissom Coley – a cousin Louise, skilled chef of the local school cafeteria (she taught me the way to make her famous chicken and pastry) – said that my great grandmother was the product of a forced union of the plantation owner’s son and her mother (Susie?) who was also the plantation owner’s daughter. I’ve lost track of which era this happened, but many family members were there when Louise told the story and confirmed it.
You’re quite welcome!!