rdricketts.com Blog

    Above: Katie Lavelette Jones (McKinney) and sister Florence ”Tiny Jones (Reynolds) on the porch of Aunt Beauty’s house on Claiborne Street in Danville, Virignia.  Beauty and their mother Annie Pruett Jones were sisters. 

Our “Aunt Beauty” was a sister to Grandmother Annie Brooks Pruett Jones (1880-1969).  The family lived on the William T. Pruett (her grandfather) farm in the Birch Creek District of Halifax County.  The farm and graveyard are on the Mercy Seat (Presbyterian) Church Road near the Pittsylvania line in the Sutherlin community.  In 1888, the family moved to Danville, Virginia.  Beauty was then not quite eleven years old and two years later she was married.  Her first child was born before she was 14 years old.   

Ida K. Pruett was born on December 16, 1877, the third child of Nathaniel Pruett and Laura Lavelette Driskill Pruett.  About 1890, Ida, called “Beauty??? by her family, married P. Slagle.  There children were (1) Blanch Slagle, born Oct 1891 (2) Annie Mae Slagle, born August 1894 who married London Campbell, and (3) Mattie Slagle, born June 1897.  On June 3, 1900, when the census taker came around, this Slagle family, with children ages nine, six and three, were living in “Emporia Town??? in Greensville County, Virginia. 

Ida’s older brother William Taylor Pruett, born November 25, 1868 and his wife, the former Mattie Olivia Hutson were living nearby.  “Uncle Willie,??? as his Danville relatives called him, worked on railroad bridges.  He became disabled after building a bridge in the Emporia area and settled there.  Two of his sisters also lived there.  Emma E. Pruett, Nat and Laura’s oldest child, died on April 25, 1899, but her daughter Emma was also nearby in Emporia with her father N. J. Blick.  Emma, called Trixie by the family, was then only one year old.  Her mother Emma died shortly after childbirth.  When the 1910 census was taken, Ida Slagle, a 36-year old widow is head of a household in Danville, Virginia with here three children aged 19, 15, and 9.  Living with Ida was her 62-year old widowed mother Laura L. Pruett and her younger sister Ethel Pruett, born August 19, 1888 (who later married John McCoy “Coy??? Hardister).  In 1910, Ida was a weaver at Riverside Cotton Mills.  Daughters Blanche was a cigarette maker in a factory. Annie Mae and her aunt Ethel also worked in the cotton mill.  By 1920, Ida was married to John A. Cain, born about 1865 in North Carolina.  John was a railroad worker.  With them are Ida’s daughter Annie Mae, 25 years old, and her husband London Campbell, age 22, both of whom worked at Riverside Cotton Mills.  She was a weaver and he operated a warper.  In 1930, Ida is again a widow at age 56.  With her on Claiborne Street in Danville, Virginia was her divorced daughter Annie Mae Campbell.  They lived in an apartment over the Harris Grocery which was on the corner of Claiborne and John Streets (John was changed to Richmond Ave.)  Ida’s sister Ethel and husband Coy bought a house nearby on John Street and in 1930, their mother Laura Lavelette Pruett was living with them   Ethel and Coy were both 32 yeas old and Laura was 82.  Laura lived three more years before she died on January 25, 1933.  This is a photograph of Beauty late in life: See blog indes at:   http://rdricketts.com/blog/