The Archive of Aches of Grandma Watson

             I have recently been engaged in assembling the stories and documentation I have collected over the decades I have been researching into a book of sorts that I can print and share easily. Through this process, I have gathered many newspaper items preserved on newspapers.com that mention my ancestors. This has been a fascinating look into their presence in the community. As I was going through the Webster Progress (a newspaper based in Webster County, MS) in the 1960s, I was both delighted and a little regretful to find a series of items detailing the injury and subsequent illness of my great-great grandmother, Rockie Brown Watson. I have written about her previously in Rockie Brown. There are a few items in 1961 and early in 1962 that mention family members visiting Rockie. On March 15, 1962 we learn of her 88th birthday party. 

        Two short months later we learn that she has had a bad fall and broken her hip.

        

         Then there are a series of items telling of her family visiting and describing her state of health.

  

Then we learn that she has been taken to the hospital but seems to be improving.

A little over a month after she went to the hospital, we learn that Rockie has passed. 

I think my favorite part of this is the letter from the family that is signed "The family of Mrs. Rockie Watson (Grandma Watson). This shows the love of the community for this special woman and the spread and influence that she and her descendants had on the community in Webster County. And now, over 125 years after she and Charles Bryant started their family, the presence and influence of her family continues.