Martha Neal Dennis, 99, of LaFayette, GA, died Thursday, January 30, 2014.
She was born at home in West Armuchee, on January 14, 1915, in the house her grandfather had built in the early 1880’s, the daughter of Reece Morton Neal and Exa Shahan Neal. Mrs. Dennis moved to LaFayette in 1921 when her mother decided the two Neal children should attend town schools. She was a 1931 graduate of LaFayette High School and a 1935 graduate of the University of Georgia, where she obtained a degree in Elementary Education.
Mrs. Dennis taught at Fairyland School 1935 - 1937, West LaFayette School 1937 - 1941, and retired after a further 15 years as a teacher and elementary librarian with the Chickamauga City Schools 1958 - 1973. Except for seven years when she lived in Tampa and Gainsville, Fl, 1950 - 1957, she spent her entire lifetime in Walker County where all her ancestors had settled before the Civil War.
After spending several years attending to the needs of a husband whose heart ailments required two bypass operations, Mrs. Dennis discovered that a widow can travel. Globus Gateway drove her, with her son and a group of LaFayette friends, the length and breadth of England and Scotland for ten days in 1987, and when Mrs. Dennis entered a nursing home in January 2014 her suitcase still bore proudly its Globus Gateway sticker.
Knoxville Tours took Mrs. Dennis by bus to so many destinations that finally Mrs. Dennis accompanied Knoxville Tours by plane to Australia and New Zealand, having run out of more domestic destinations. The Lifeline button she wore for protection before entering the nursing home had attached to its chain a ring mounted with the large opal she had purchased in Australia.
A dedicated genealogist who found the extensive resources of the Cherokee Regional Library’s local History Room stimulating, Mrs. Dennis was active in her local chapters of the Colonial Dames of XVII Century (Chatanuga Chapter), Daughters of the American Revolution (William Marsh Chapter) and United Daughters of the Confederacy. Friends began to realize that her decisive character may have had genetic roots in a family tree which included eight members of Congress and three governors as well as Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy and James Buchanan’s Minister to St. Petersburg.
But Mrs. Dennis’s approach to history was far simpler than these connections would indicate: “If it didn’t happen in Walker County, it wasn’t important.” She loved the county into whose rich history she had been born. Little gave her greater pleasure than a drive up and down the length of the West Armuchee Valley, where she could still remember the names of the families which had occupied the older houses during her childhood and youth. A grandfather who had been for many years a one-third partner in the Brick Store at Villanow made her the inheritor of the ledgers for that store covering the period 1880 - 1910.
Having lived into an age of revisionist histories of the Civil War, she remained convinced that the story Margaret Mitchell had told in Gone With the Wind best recorded the difficult experiences of her Georgia ancestors when Walker County became a war-torn area. For school pageants, as a child she had worn the altered “Colonial Lady” skirt made by her maternal grandmother from material sent to her by a favorite brother who died in one of the preliminary skirmishes to the Battle of Antietam. Mrs. Dennis remembered the stories told by that grandmother about foraging Yankee troops that shot chickens from under a house but failed to steal the well bucket because that grandmother was obstinately sitting on it. Over the door into the room in which most of her living was done, Mrs. Dennis had hung her Neal grandfather’s Civil War sword.
In LaFayette, Mrs. Dennis threw herself into useful work with local groups, whether it was sitting at the entrance to a weekly church supper in order to collect the money or maintaining the graduation records for older graduates of the local high school and helping organize their annual reunion dinners. She served on a local library board and as an active volunteer at a church library helped prepare library cards in the best professional manner. Few things pleased her more than helping a young cousin prepare an application for membership in a genealogical organization.
In the final years of her life, Mrs. Dennis had a faithful cleaning woman who appeared three times each week for one hour a day, but often found herself turned into a driver to take Mrs. Dennis to appointments or to drive her around town so that she could keep up with local changes. Mrs. Dennis read all issues of the Walker County Messenger, and regretted that the newspaper could no longer continue the extensive “social” coverage that had made its picture of life in a small county seat town so definitive in earlier years.
Mrs. Dennis was an active member of the First Baptist Church in LaFayette, where she was a member of Ellis-Walraven Sunday School Class and the Mary Christian Circle. Prior to that, she was a member for 25 years of the Chickamauga Presbyterian Church.
Mrs. Dennis was preceded in death by her husband, Dr. Walter Roland Dennis; and son, Walter Reece Dennis.
She is survived by her son, Stephen Neal Dennis, of Washington and LaFayette; and special cousin, Rebecca Love Kidd of Chattanooga.
A funeral service will be held at the Wallis Memorial Chapel of the Wallis-Wilbanks Funeral Home in LaFayette at 2 p.m. on Monday, February 3. Burial will be in LaFayette Cemetery.
Visitation will be on Saturday, February 1, from 5-7 p.m. at the Wallis-Wilbanks Funeral Home who has charge of the arrangements.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Christian Appalachian Project, Box 459, Hagerhill, Kentucky 41222; The Care Mission, 105 North Chattanooga Street, LaFayette, GA 30728; or First Baptist Church, 201 North Main Street, LaFayette, GA 30728.