OBITUARY:
George Gravlee, Veteran Teacher, To Be Buried
Sumiton, Ala., April 17
Funeral services for George Strother Gravlee, 76, longtime Jefferson and Walker County teacher and Baptist minister, will be at 10 a.m. Monday here. Mr. Gravlee of Sumiton, died Friday night in a Birmingham hospital after a long illness.
A native of Gravleeton in Walker County, Mr. Gravlee had lived in Sumiton for the past 27 years. He had taught in rural schools and had been a Baptist minister before retiring. He was a member of Sumiton Baptist Church, a Mason and a member of Lions.
The Revs. J. N. Black and Grady Hunter will officiate at services at Sumiton Baptist Church. Burial will be in the adjoining cemetery. Surviving Mr. Gravlee are his wife, Mrs. Ada Elizabeth Sellers Gravlee; five sons, C. L. and Gray S. Gravlee, both of Birmingham; G. C. Gravlee, of Visalia, Calif.; W. J. Gravlee of Fort Wayne, Ind., and Gaines Gravlee of Washington D. C.; seven daughters, Mrs. Paul Corbett of San Francisco, Calif.; Mrs. Edward Moss of Greenwood, S.C.; Mrs. Odell Grady and Mrs. F. B. Miller, both of Birmingham; Mrs. Gene Tidwell and Mrs. W. H. Sides, both of Dora, and Mrs. V. Allen Gaines of Richmond, Va.; a brother, G. G. Gravlee of Birmingham; three sisters, Mrs. A. H. Roberson and Mrs. J. V. Ward Sr., both of Birmingham, and Mrs. J. G. Barton of Haleyville; 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Masons will conduct graveside services.

He went by his middle name of Strother. He was born at home in February 1878 in the rural area of Walker County, Alabama that was near the fork of the Mulberry & Sispey Rivers. He is found on the 1880 and 1900 census living with his parents, Harvey Jackson Gravlee and Nancy Narcissa Gaines. On 5 January 1902 he married Lillian Frances (Fannie) York and they had three children, Clyde, Josephine (she lived in San Francisco starting in 1943) and Ava. Strother's wife, Fannie, was born in 1882 and died of pneumonia in February 1907 at the age of 24. She was buried in Rices Chapel Baptist Church Cemetery in Campbellville, Walker County, Alabama. Two years later, Strother married a second time on 26 September 1909 to Ada Elizabeth (Lizzie) Sellers. She was the daughter of John Walton Sellers and Missiniah Ellen Wilson and was born in July 1889 In the Bethel Community in Jefferson County, Alabama and was 11 years younger than Strother. They meet while she was a student and he was a teacher. They had 11 children, adding to the 3 Strother had already had with his first wife. Some years later Gravlee family reunions were held yearly at Aunt Myra's in Birmingham and were a sizable group once the 12 kids came with their spouses and children.
Strother did not graduate from high school until 1904 when he was 26 and he became a teacher by passing an examination. He taught in a literacy school in Walker County. Between 1916-1918 he was a partner in a coal mining operation in the Black Creek seam; they did well selling all their coal to the US government, but once the seam played out, they tried another, but it soon played out too. So Strother went back to teaching; this time in a public school in Haleyville, Winston County, Alabama. He moved his growing family there as well. In September 1920, he was ordained as a minister in the Salem Baptist Church of Christ in that same county. He only preached on occasion, but was instrumental in starting many Sunday School programs in the area and was authorized to perform marriages. In 1921, he was teaching in Cooper, Chilton County, Alabama and he rode the train to and from school each day, as he and his family lived in Marbury, north of Montgomery, Alabama by then. That same summer, Strother attended Troy Normal School (now Troy State College) with his tuition paid by a local businessman. He was able to up grade his teaching qualifications. From 1922 to 1924 the family lived in Prattville, Autauga County, Alabama. It was during this time that Strother was a salesman for the Singer Sewing Machine Company. At the end of 1924, the family moved again. This time they went to Mount Olive, Jefferson County, Alabama. Here he farmed a few acres; this move was to help both Strother and Lizzie with their rheumatism, as the Prattville area was swampy and damp. Two years later they are found near Crocker Junction in Jefferson County, Alabama. The next year in 1927, Strother bought a 1926 Model T Touring Car; some years later he traded it in for a one ton Model TT Ford truck so he could haul his vegetables, chickens and eggs to market. It was also in 1927 that Strother and Lizzie made their permanent home on a farm in the Sumiton area of Walker County, Alabama. This house had once belonged to Strother's father, but Strother bought it from his brother, Earl Gravlee. Strother and Lizzie's children redid a lot of it, as it had originally been a duplex. They built a chicken house, smoke house, house to cure sweet potatoes and a new outhouse. A stone curb for the well in the front yard was added in 1932 and when electricity finally arrived at the house, their son, Gaines, and his grandson, George (age 8), installed a jet pump in the summer of 1948, which provided running water to the house. It wasn't until 1950 that Gaines dug and concreted a septic tank and bought fixtures for a bathroom. While they lived in Sumiton, Strother was a part-time teacher of Opportunity Schools, teaching adults to read and write. From 1941 to 1950 Strother also owned a small grocery store at the road near the house. It was built by his sons, Gray and Gaines, before they went off to serve in WWII. His daughter, Mabel, did the bookkeeping and ordering. In 1950 he wrote this to his daughter, Jo, "I have closed my store; I cannot see after it. We have installed a bathroom outfit in our home-keeps us out of the weather. I rent the farm out. I have sold all the cars and trucks." Strother died 4 years later in April 1954 in a hospital in Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama of uremic syndrome and prostate problems. He was 76 and buried in the Bethel Baptist Church Cemetery in Jefferson County, Alabama. Lizzie lived until January 1969, dying at age 79 in the Baptist Home for Senior Citizens in Cooks Springs, Saint Clair County, Alabama of dementia. She was buried next to her husband.
Their son, Gaines, wrote a book about his memories of the family from which a lot of what is written here came from. But the following came directly from Clarence about his father. "He was the one who ran the family. He had a quick temper and was quite opinionated. He always had a checker board around and when there wasn't anything else to do, he would find someone to play checkers with." His grandson, George, remembers playing with his grandfather, Strother, at his store out on the road and always getting beat.