Martha Melinda Stone (1879-1968)

Martha Melinda Stone was born on April 13, 1879 in Yadkin township, Stokes County, North Carolina, the youngest of the two daughters of John Julius Stone, a farmer, and Temperance "Tempy" Minerva Wall. Martha's father died in 1881, when she was two, and after her mother's second marriage to George Washington Vest in 1885, Martha spent her childhood on their farm in Stokes County, along with her sister Florida Virginia Stone and half-siblings Allie Vest, Ella Vest, and Craven Vest. They raised hogs and grew tobacco and other crops.

In 1907 she left North Carolina to work in upstate New York, where she obtained a series of positions doing household work. She worked in South Edmeston, Otsego County, NY, as well as in the nearby town of New Berlin, where her hometown friend (and her sister Florida's sister-in-law) Minnie E Westmoreland Norton lived after her marriage. In 1908 Martha served as a housekeeper and nanny to a Mr. and Mrs. Pardee in New Berlin, NY, who later sent her a portrait of their children.

Later she returned to Mount Airy, North Carolina, to live with her aunt and uncle, Permelia Stone Bowman and Alec G. Bowman, on Rawley Avenue. She helped with household duties and also worked in her uncle's mercantile store, which she continued to do on and off for many years. Her diaries from 1907-1910 and 1916 are an interesting window into the domestic life of the period.

She lived in Mount Airy for the rest of her life, never marrying. She was a devout Methodist and a tireless correspondent, continuing to write postcards to her family and friends in increasingly cryptic handwriting until long after her eyesight had failed. She died on January 26, 1968, at the age of 88, in a nursing home there, and is buried in Oakdale Cemetery near the Bowman family.

Martha Melinda Stone's place in the Stone family tree as it relates to this archive can be seen here.

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