Conversations with Fay Rudd Chiles about Rudd Family
(C. Avis Catalog entry #22)
Joseph R. Rudd spent time in a Union prison camp and died there. He was taken to Dalton, Ga. to be buried. James Calvin Rudd was a teenager and thus the family was worried about his military status. He had to be sneaked through the Yankee lines with the help of a female Yankee sympathizer.
J. C. Rudd knew when meteor showers were coming and would take the family outside and arrange the blankets, etc. She remembers Halley's Comet.
Fay's parents, James Rudd and Maggie Mooring planned to marry, but her father did not approve, so they ran off to San Antonio and had her cousin, Rev. Walter Richardson, marry them on 2/19/1892. After their first child was born, things were mostly OK.
The story of the plums and Squire Harris' bull was told by J. C. Rudd and was about he and his father. He also had a story about him coming home after dark by the frog pond, etc. He would entertain the neighborhood kids with his stories.
Fay thinks that J. C. Rudd died of pneumonia after being sick a few days. Thinks he was staking a cow in a vacant lot, had some kind of trouble with the job. When he got home, he couldn't catch his breath. The doctor was called but couldn't do much. Might have been a heart attack.
Fay's sister Hilda Rudd married Thomas Jefferson McElhenney.
Their son Thomas Rudd McElhenney married Ada Oakley.
Their daughter Hilda married Llewellyn Griffith.
T. R and Ada had children: Thomas, Amy, Sidney, John
Hilda and Llewellyn had children: Ann, Llewellyn Brooks, Hilda