Amenuensis Monday: Obituary for Julia Wallace (1867-1934)

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

Today I transcribe the obituary for Julia (Wallis) Wallace (1867-1934), the second wife of my wife's second great grandfather, John T Wallace. Clipping found at Newspapers.com

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Funeral services for Mrs. Julia Wallace, 66 years old, who died Tuesday at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Elmer Kindred, in Crowder, were conducted at the residence at 10 o'clock Wednesday morning by the Rev. A.C. Sullivan, pastor of the Morehouse Baptist church. Burial was in Memorial Park cemetery.

Mrs. Wallace, who had been ill for approximately a year, was born in Florence, Ala. on June 2, 1867. In March 1898 she married John Wallace. She had been a member of the Missionary Baptist church at Vanduser for the last twenty-six years.

Besides Mrs. Kindred, Mrs. Wallace is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Verbal Rodgers, Sikeston, and Mrs. Edna Hamlin, Vanduser; two sons, Alva Wallace, Vanduser and Arthur Wallace, Morehouse; three stepsons, Turner and David Wallace, Vanduser, and Jim Wallace, Morehouse; and thirteen grandchildren. Three children have died. Mr. Wallace has been dead for eighteen years. Welsh service.

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1) My wife's second great grandfather had two wives, Lorrah Wallis and Julia Wallis. All indications are that when his first wife died in 1893, he married her younger sister the following year. Lorrah was the mother of my wife's great grandfather, John Turner Wallace. (I haven't yet verified the parents of Lorrah and Julia that are indicated on some Ancestry.com family trees are accurate.) Wallis and Wallace are alternate spellings of the same surname, so John T Wallace may have been related to his wives in some fashion, perhaps distantly.

2) The obituary doesn't list the names of the children who predeceased Julia. Jesse (1902-1911) is one of them. I'm guessing the other two died as infants between censuses.

3) "Welsh service" is a reference to "Welsh Funeral Home," which is now called "Ponder Funeral Home."