Grandmother Beulah
Updated March 12, 2012.
GRIMSTEAD, DELON.
September 1, 2010. LYDIA GRIMSTEAD SMITH celebrates 60 years of marriage.
November 29, 2011. CHARLES WASHINGTON GRIMSTEAD
April 1, 2010. I am Janet Grimstead Simons, daughter of William Louis Grimstead and Eva Iris Waterfield. Mom's parents were Eva Doxey and Garland Edward Waterfield.
My Grimstead family was blessed with two families, one biological and one adoptive. My Grandmother Beulah was born to John Corbell and Virginia Cordia Sawyer. Her mother died at birth and John Corbell unable to care for her allowed her to be adopted by Capt. Thomas H. DeLon and Mary Frances Etheridge in 1901. Grandmother Beulah was raised at False Cape and attended Wash Woods Methodist Church. She married Louis Elmer Grimstead in 1917. Granddaddy Grimstead was in WWI when their first daughter Lucille was born, I think at the now closed Bay Haven Farm. Ben Etheridge (Mary's) brother had married Granddaddy Louis' widowed mother Emma Williams Grimstead. I believe, however that the rest of the siblings were born on the DeLon property in the Foxx house. I have copies of pictures of the family there. I have talked with Louise Doxey and Florence Corbell Flannagan. Dad and his siblings walked out to the road and then walked to school with the Doxey children. I remember visiting the Corbell family as Grandmother always maintained a close relationship. John Corbell was married three times and the last wife was a sister to Mary DeLon, Sadie Elizabeth. My Grimstead family moved some time in the early 1930's by barge to the Public Landing Rd. farm where my brother and my son now live. Family members who lived in the Foxx house: Louis and Beulah with children Lucille Virginia (Shores) born 1918 in Munden, VA. Born in the Foxx house were Beulah Frances (Dixon) (1920), William Louis (1922) and Russell Harvey Grimstead (1924). Grandmother Grimstead's heart and spirit never left Knotts Island, however. She refused to move her membership from Knotts Island UMC to Bethel UMC with my granddaddy. She is buried in the Knotts Island Church cemetery in the DeLon, Etheridge, Grimstead plot. Other family members buried there: Capt. Thomas H. DeLon, Mary Frances Etheridge DeLon, Jerome Bonaparte Etheridge (father of Mary, Napoleon,Missouri, Joseph, Isaac, William, Sadie, Bertha, Emily and Ben), Napoleon Bonaparte Etheridge, Bettie O'Neal (wife of N. B. Etheridge), Beulah Virginia Corbell DeLon Grimstead, Louis Elmer Grimstead, William Louis Grimstead. Grandmother Grimstead always called Knotts Island, "God's Country." It is special to me, too.
August 28, 2010. Comment - Janet Grimstead Simons. William Louis Grimstead joined the U. S. Coast Guard in 1939. The U. S. Navy took over the Coast Guard in 1941 when World War II was declared. Dad was assigned to a convoy escort Anti-Submarine, Anti-Aircraft Warfare Ship, U.S.S. George M. Bibb. He was assigned duty in the North and South Atlantic Oceans, the Carribean, Mediterranean, Norwegin, Baltic and North Seas--the Northern Convoy Route across the Arctic Circle and the North African Campaign. He was Honorably Discharged as a BM2 in 1945.
His letter dated May 1, 1941, from New London , Conn, says they put
the
Mendota, along with three others,officially out of commission as a U.
S. Ship the day before. The British sailors lined up on one side of the
quarter deck and Americans on the other. The British Marine band played
the Star Spangled Banner while the flags came down. Dad brought the
commission pennant down from the mast and had it as a sovenier. The
Mendota was renamed H.M.S. Culver.
September 17, 2010. Russell Harvey Grimstead was born on Knotts Island in 1924, served in the Coast Guard and Navy during World War II. He served with his brother William on the U. S. Coast Guard Cutter George M. Bibb. Following WW II, he became the caretaker and guide at the Flyway Club.
Comment - April 9,2010 - Jane Brumley: Thomas H. DeLon was appointed keeper of Station False Cape, Virginia on August 15, 1910. This station started in 1881, was abandoned in 1946.
March 12, 2012. Comment - Janet Simons.
Following is some info from Fielding Tyler, who was at the restored
Coast Guard Station at the Oceanfront.
Thomas Harvey DeLon...His first record in the US Life-Saving Service
was in 1905 where he was assigned as a Surfman at False Cape. He had
probably entered the service at some period prior to the turn of the
century. (He was born 12/9/1872) He participated in the rescue of
survivors of the Belgian schooner Antigoon which stranded on the beach
in December 1905. In 1907 he and other surfmen from the False Cape was
well as the Little Island Life-saving Station received awards from the
Belgian Government. Surfman DeLon was presented with a Belgian Civic
Cross, 2nd Class and five dollars (25 Belgian francs.) In 1908 DeLon
appears on the roster at False Cape Life-Saving Station as Surfman
Number 1. In August 1910 he was appointed Keeper of the False Cape
Station. He served as Keeper at least until 1918. No further mention is
available after that date. From the award document--other members
listed from the False Cape Station: William H. O'Neal, coxswain; and
Harry W. Cason, William J. Stevens, Walter J. Williams, Clayton Ewell,
Henry N. Holmes and Charles H. Wroton.