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Merrimack Cemetery, Huntsville, Alabama, page 49
Maple Hill Cemetery. Sources: Ann Greenhaw. Census, 1860, Jackson Co., Stevenson, Alabama, p. 47 (upper left of page). GUTHRIE, STACIE G., 1882 - 1938. (ROW 2) This was Stacie Lavan, born Nov. 12, 1882, daughter of Lawson Hill Lavan and Martha (Cornelius) Lavan of Tracy City, Grundy Co., Tennessee. She had four brothers, Will, Martin, Tike, and Edward, and one sister, Maggie Lou who married Virgil Sitz, all of Tracy City. Stacie married James (Jim) Guthrie, son of Virgil Guthrie, also of Tracy City, on November 11, 1902. They had eight children, William, Irene, Cathleen, Pascal, Ruth, Jasper, James Edward, and Thelma. Jim worked in the coal mines but was hurt on the job. In 1926, when Thelma, the youngest child, was 6 years old, Jim came to Huntsville and arranged to take a job with Merrimack Mfg. Co., and rented a house in the village. The next weekend he moved Stacie and the five youngest children to their new home. After about a month, Jim left one Saturday morning saying he may be late coming in, for he was walking to town to try to find a job for the older of the children who moved with them. In the evening Stacie prepared Jim's favorite foods for supper and waited for him to return home. He never came home. The whole community tried to find him, thinking somthing dire had happened to him. Men searched in gulleys and creeks between Merrimack and downtown Huntsville. Flyers asking for information of his whereabouts were di stri buted. When he did not return, Mr. Kidd Lovell, the Personnel Manager of Merrimack Mfg. Co. called Stacie into his office and told her she could not live in the mill house because no one was working in the mill. She said she did not have a place to go. The children were too young to work in the mill. They agreed that if the older boy, Pascal, would work in the mill when he was old enough and if she could pay the rent in the meantime, the family could stay there. And that is what they did. She did laundry for neighbors and in the nights she sewed for the public to make money for rent and to rear the children. All but Thelma did work in the mill when they became old enough. January 30, 1938, Stacie died of cancer believing Jim had died when he had left home that Saturday twelve years before. Actually he had moved to Kentucky with a woman. After Stacie died he visited, with his’ common-law wife and a child, the children who still lived in Tracy City, and the children from Huntsville went to the reunion. Source: Thelma Guthrie Pendergraft. Census, 1900, Grundy Co., Tennessee, E.D. 35, Sh. 3 A, line 16. 49 - (1355)