My Grand Uncle John Henry Dodd, Jr was the youngest (12th) of 12 children born to my great grandparents, John Henry Dodd and Mary Caroline Bragg on Thursday, 19 Aug 1909, in Hinton, Summers County, WV. One month and six days after his birth his mother died.

At some point he was taken in by Samuel H Holliday's family to raise. The story had been circulated down through the years in the Dodd family that John Henry had been taken in by "Doc Holliday's family;" however, unless farmer Samuel H Holliday was known to mix herbal remedies and pass them out around to other farmers' families in times of sickness, this was nothing but a rumor as the 1920 and 1930 federal censuses can attest to - John Henry, Jr was a resident in the Holliday household in Irish Corner, Greenbrier County, WV and listed as a "boarder" at the age of 10 on the 1920 census and as a "lodger" at the age of 20 on the 1930 census. As to where baby John Henry, Jr was at the time of the 1910 federal census, this grant niece has yet to determine because he was neither listed as a member of the Dodd household, of which his father was the head, or as a member of the Holliday household.

On Saturday, 30 Jun 1934, John Henry Dodd, Jr married Lovetta Evelee Bennett. They had two children before the enumeration of the 1940 federal census on 6 Apr 1940, when they were living in Gabriella, Seminole County, FL and renting a place near his youngest brother, Basil Corbett Dodd, who owned a Dairy Farm on which John Henry worked as a laborer: John Henry Dodd, III and Charlotte Doris Dodd. It is not known by this grand niece whether Grand Uncle John Henry and Grand Aunt Lovetta had any more children after the 1940 census.

What I do know is that at some time after the 1940 census, John Henry and Lovetta took their family back to WV.

In the late fall of 1976 I took my paternal grandmother, Cora 'Dale' Dodd Sloniger, to visit her youngest brother in WV on my way to join my relatively new husband in Philadelphia, PA, where my husband's Navy ship, the USS Luce, was due to go into dry dock for a year. My grandmother and I got to their house barely in time for supper and I had to leave early the next morning, so I didn't get a chance to know my grand uncle and aunt except to say "Hi" and "Bye" to.

Now Grand Uncle John and Grand Aunt Lovetta, as well as Granny and all of the rest of her siblings are gone. Well, I am, myself, 60 years old. What else should I expect?