BIO: by Karla Todd Sherer

~My Loving Grandmother~

Delphia May Scroggins was born to Thomas Humphrey and Jenetta P. Ray Scroggins. She had two brothers and two sisters connected below. May was only 16 when her mother died.

A year to the day after her mother's death, May married John Louis Todd on 2 May 1912, in Wright City OK. John worked for Choctaw Lumber Co. in Wright City which later became Deirk's Lumber. May worked many years operating the town's telephone switchboard located in their home and accepting billing payments. Within the next year after her marriage, her father and her two younger sisters moved in with them. The sisters were still very young and their dad had to work so May now was helping raise her sisters as well as caring for her new baby (my father), working the switchboard, and cooking and housekeeping for all. She was 17 years old with a family of 6 including a new baby, and a 24 hr. a day job on a switchboard.

May and John lived in Wright City for more than 31 years. Around 1940 they moved to the small town of Patroon, TX and there, John worked a short time at a sawmill run by Claude Williams. Claude was planning to build a new sawmill in the small East TX town of Newton, and wanted John Todd to help him build and run it. May and John moved to Newton around 1941 - 42. That sawmill was called Newton Lumber Company, and John Todd was the Millwright who helped build it. He then held positions of Planer Foreman and Saw Filer. It was active for many years. John died in 1947. Around 1950, May moved back to Idabel where she lived until her death.

An avid bird hunter, my grandmother was an excellent shot. She also loved raising and training Red Irish Setters to take along on her bird hunts. She enjoyed the hunting until John died and then never hunted again. She was a great cook and some of her recipes are still family favorites today. We have passed them down through 4 generations. Some of the 5th generation are now using her amazing trick with french fries or "fried potatoes" as she called them. May was widowed at the age of 50 and it changed her life. I don't believe she ever learned to cope with it. She never hunted again, never drove a car again, didn't enjoy cooking anymore, or was not very social. John's death just changed everything about her life. I feel she was suffering from chronic depression but that was prior to this condition being recognized as it is today. She was a bit of a character also. I vividly remember she never went to bed without checking all her closets and under her beds to make sure there was no one hiding in the house but with her trusty shotgun by her bed, anyone hiding would have been a mistake since she didn't miss with that gun. She was an adoring grandmother and I loved her very much.

...Rest in God's loving arms Mamaw - I miss you always.

OBITUARY

Courtesy of Findagrave member Brandon O'Rear

Idabel Genealogy Dept., Idabel Library

TODD SERVICES SET THURSDAY - 8 Jan 1985

Funeral services for Delphia May Todd, 89, Idabel are set for 2 p.m. Thursday in the Norwood Funeral Chapel in Idabel, with the Rev. Charles Duvall officiating.

She died Tuesday at her home in Idabel.

Born March 20, 1895 at Garland Farms, Ark., she resided in Wright City about 29 years while working more than 15 years as a telephone operator for the Wright City Phone Company.

After a short period in Texas, she was a resident of Idabel the past 34 years and was a member of the First Baptist Church of Wright City. She was married to John L. Todd, who preceded her in death on June 18, 1947.

Survivors include one son, J.N. "Rosy" Todd of Waco, Tex.; two grandsons, John Neal Todd, Jr., of Liberty, Tex., and Conley Leon Todd, Jr., of Beaumont, Tex,; two granddaughters, Karla Jane Sherer of Houston, Tex., and Sandra Jean Piazza of Waco; six great granddaughters, and one sister, Emma McNeil of Idabel.

Arrangements and burial in Denison Cemetery are under the direction of Norwood Funeral Home of Idabel.