Madeline Dix Reeves just phoned me from Decatur and told me that years ago, when they took Aunt Dimple to Pine Grove from Montgomery, she told Madeline that since she had married a Baptist preacher, she wanted her to have Grandfather Dix’s library.

Madeline said her husband, W. P. Reeves, used the books and she had had them all these years.  She just wanted me to know she had given them to the (Baptist) Samford University in Birmingham Alabama and are now being evaluated.  Of course they are very old and she has been told one book had already been valued for $100.00.

I asked her if she didn’t tell me she had been to * Uncle Will’s grave in Albany Ga.  She said she and Mr. Reeves and his son W.P. Jr. (who has died) were on their way home from Fla. when they happened to come through Albany Ga.  She said there are two cemeteries in Albany, an old and new.  She knew he would be in the old one.  No one was there to direct them so they just drove around and happened to go right to it.

She said when Uncle Will became ill he was taken to his parents home in Union Springs, Ala and died there but he had been such a loved pastor of the Baptist Church in Albany, the congregation asked that he be buried in Albany and they paid the funeral expenses and had the stone erected.  Madeline took a picture of stone but said she had no idea where it was.  

Madeline appreciated the picture, Edward, you took of our mantle showing the Angeland [?] Cherub bowl she sent us that had been a wedding present of her parents in 1902

Mary Vernon Dix Sproles

*William Beach Dix  Mar. 19 1865 – Aug. 27, 1886

[Note…the above was written in my mothers hand lightly in pencil on some paper that has yellowed.  As a result, it didn’t copy well.  The bowl being referenced in the last paragraph is still there, it has a female figure with an outstretched arm that Mom said people hung their keys on.  Considering its apparent delicacy, it is amazing that it hasn’t broken.  Ed Sproles Nov 2002]