This year's crop of Delta Debulantes are really making hay these days, so far as the front pages of Delta Democrat Times' Sunday society sections are concerned.
They are good-lookers too, and right now we are gazing at the charming portraits of the Misses Mary DuBose Garrard and Mabelle Moseley Garrard. Quoting from the cut-line, we note that Mary is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Billy Garrard of Indianola, and Mabelle is the daughter of Mrs. David Turner Duncan and the late Jimmy Garrard of Greenwood.
Mary's mother was a Clark and Mabelle's mother was a Keesler, both of which are plenty good names for anybody's background, but it was Grandpaw Garrard who got the biggest play in the historical part of the cut-lines, as a civic leader, planter, and general manager of the Staple Cotton Cooperative Association.
Which is okay by us, Mister Will, so long as Old Stuff can even things by bringing Grandmamaw Garrard onto the center of the stage as well. For you see, readers, the senior Mrs. Garrard was once upon a time a Greenville girl.
As Mabelle Smith, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Smith, she lived on North Broadway, next door to the Dr. John Archer residence, in a frame-house that was long-since moved to make way for what is now the home of George and Lillian Helms.
Like a lot more of us oldtimers, Mabelle Smith went to school to Miss Susie Trigg, Miss Ella Darling, Miss Carrie Stern, and Mr. E. E. Bass, and loves the memory of each and every one of them. She recalls the Greenville of mud-streets, yellow-fever quarantines, and auto-frequent overflows and, on the personal side, even remembers the afternoon that Old Shuff was bitten by the mad-dog.
Mrs. Garrard's father, Mr. Smith, was associated in business, first with a Mr. Baird, and later with Mr. Lyne Starling Sr. (father of Mrs. W. M. Held Sr. and Mr. Henry Starling) in the firm Starling, Smith & Co. (The cast iron threshold of the door to Fielder's Uptown Grocery still bears the initials "S S & Co.")
"Poosie" Trigg once told us that the side of the Broadway block where the Smiths lived was known as "Methodist Row," with the Olen, Jayne, Smith, and John Archer residences, in the order named as you go northward. The Bradley family lived in the Olen house for many years, and then the Broadway Beauty Shop occupied same. Both this and the Jayne home have been recently razed in favor of a parking-lot.
It interests us to note that Mabelle Smith Garrard's namesake, Mabelle Moseley Garrard, should have David Turner Duncan for a step-father. For here again is Methodist background, Mr. Duncan's late father having been a Methodist minister. David's mother was Louise Bingham (of Carrollton), who gave him her brother Dave Bingham's name. (The Turner is for his grandmother ("Eva") Bingham.)
And let us not forget debutante Mabelle's step-grandpaw, the late Hon. J. R. ("Cousin Reid") Bingham, Carroll County banker and a trustee of Vanderbilt University. He wrote letters, sometimes daily, to the editor of the Commercial Appeal, denouncing the suggestion of a union of the northern and southern branches of his church, and extolling the virtues of his old friend Bishop Galloway, with frequently a plug for Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson.
And in Old Stuff's book, Brother Bingham will be remembered as just about the biggest Methodist layman of his day.
