R459
Husband: Gratton Swan Reynolds
Father: James Francis Reynolds [R004]
Mother: Rebecca Young (Entsminger, Wood) Reynolds [R004]
Born: 12/25/1879 near Millboro, Va.
Died: 5/6/1939, Buried in Prospect Cemetery, Tarentum, Pa.
Wife: Kathryn L. (Weiss) Reynolds
Father: O. H. Weiss
Mother: Susan D. (Colin) Weiss
Born: 5/13/1895 in Gettysburg, Pa.
Died: 3/13/1978, Buried in Prospect Cemetery, Tarentum, Pa.
Married: 1/12/1921, in West Virginia
Children:
Suzanne Kathryn Reynolds, b. 12/29/1921 in Tarentum, Pa., d. 5/24/1929. Buried in Prospect Cemetery, Tarentum, Pa.
Dwight Colin Reynolds, b. 2/23/1928 [R460]
Son Dwight wrote such a good summary of his family's history that I have reproduced it intact:
"My father, Gratton Swan Reynolds, died when I was eleven, and so I have very little knowledge of his early years. What little I do know, was passed on to me by my mother, and I don't think that she knew much herself, about Gratton's early years. After he finished school, he worked in the railroad repair shops in Clifton Forge, and later on he studied mechanical engineering at VPI, and worked in various steel mills in Pittsburgh, a year at a time, in order to pay for his continued studies at VPI. As far as I know he never graduated from VPI, but started working for the West Penn Steel Company in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, in the early 1900's.
"Gratton met Kathryn Weiss at a dance in Pittsburgh in 1920, and they were married in January 1921, and moved into their first home on Highland Avenue, in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. My sister Suzanne, was born in Tarentum on December 19, 1921, and I was born in Pittsburgh on February 23, 1928. There were just the two of us. In May of 1929, my sister died of shock and from burns she received in a tragic accidental fire at home. My sister's death was devastating for my parents, especially since they blamed themselves for the accident. My father went into early retirement, they sold their house, put their furniture into storage, and moved to Florida. We lived in Florida during the winter, and summers we lived in Chautauqua, New York. In 1933, when I was old enough to start school, we started to live all year around in St. Petersburg.
"Gratton was always rather shy and soft spoken, this is probably why he was so late in getting married, and when it came to me, my mother was the boss. My father never had much to say to me, but when he did have something to say to me, he never called me by my name, but he would always call me 'boy.'
"From time to time, when we lived in St. Petersburg, friends of the family would come to visit us, and once we had visitors from Virginia, Gratton's half brother L. E. Wood [R005], and probably L. E's son John [R560]. This was probably the only real contact that Gratton had had with his family since he and my mother had visited Clifton Forge together with my sister Suzanne in the middle twenties. Before that Gratton had only been back to Virginia once after his mother Rebecca died in 1901.
"The summer of 1938 we moved north again from St. Petersburg to Jamestown, New York. Gratton and Kathryn had had enough of the hot Florida summers, and Jamestown had a good school system, and I was about to start sixth grade. Jamestown was well known to people from the Pittsburgh area, because it was near Lake Chautauqua, a favorite summer resort for them.
"In May of 1939 Gratton died from carbon monoxide poisoning, in another tragic accident, while working on the motor of his car. Being a master mechanic, Gratton took pride in doing all the repair work needed on his cars himself. My mother and I stayed in Jamestown, and in 1950, the same year I graduated from college, she married William Lawson of Chautauqua. In 1959 Kathryn and William retired to Port Charlotte, and in 1971 they moved to Shell Point Village, near Sanibel, Florida, where Kathryn died in March of 1978, and William in December of the same year."
Sources: [S170]
