Edna Grace Perry (1872-1971) was a daughter of Llewellyn Francisco "Zeke" Perry (1868–1957) and Elizabeth Hortensia Baxley (1870-1942). She was a well-known school teacher. Her obituary from 1971 speaks of her life and career:
FLORENCE MORNING NEWS, MAY 22, 1971
Miss Grace Perry, 78, retired school teacher, landowner, farmer, and church benefactor died Friday after a long illness. She had taught school for 38 years prior to her retirement and actively managed more than 1000 acres of farmlands...
Miss Perry was born near Hemingway, a daughter of the late Llewellyn Francisco and Elizabeth Hortensia Baxley Perry. She was a graduate of Winthrop College and begun her teaching career in Ft. Myers, FL, where she taught elementary school for a year prior to returning to South Carolina.
Her teaching career in South Carolina spanned 37 years, in schools from the Piedmont to the Pee Dee, but most of her teaching was in Florence County. She had taught in the Johnsonville school system for a number of years prior to her retirement in the late 1950s.
Miss Perry was a member of the Old Johnsonville United Methodist Church and has been memorialized by the church as its benefactor. During the past several years, she personally contributed funds to the church which were used to renovate and refurbish the old, wood-frame structure into a modern brick church, replete with central heating and air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpeting, a Colonial-style frontage and edifice.
She also contributed funds for the construction of an education building for the church and subsequently presented the church with an especially manufactured electrical pipe organ. A plaque memorializes her contributions as "gifts of love for her God, Christ, and fellow man."
She is survived by a sister, Mrs. Philip R. Helbig of Johnsonville, and a few nieces and nephews.
Taken circa 1952 as the Helbig family was leaving at the end of a 2 week vacation in Johnsonville. Nancy Helbig Hirst remembers: "Aunt Grace always sent us off with a whole fried chicken and one of those old-fashioned pound cakes - and she actually weighed some of the ingredients! She was often up cooking by 4am so she could send us off with food. I have such wonderful memories of those times!
Edna Grace Perry (1892-1971) was a daughter of Llewellyn Francisco "Zeke" Perry (1868–1957) and Elizabeth Hortensia Baxley (1870-1942). She was a well-known school teacher at Prospect. Grace Perry and John Baker were sweethearts, but Grace's mother wouldn't allow her to marry and said she was needed at home. Grace never married.
Ida Venters Edmond (1882-1931) taught in a 1-room school in Hemingway near where Mrs. Morris's home was later located. She was a daughter of Nelson and Susan Humphreys Venters.
Edith Perry Nettles (1900-1966) poses here on a porch with son Thurston Carey Nettles (1925-1988). Edith was a daughter of Elizabeth Hortensia Baxley and Llewellyn Perry. She married Howard Elijah Nettles (1891-1944). Edith was raised in Johnsonville but moved to Lake City after marriage.
This home once stood on Baxley Road, near current day Hemingway Elementary. The home was the birthplace of Elizabeth Hortensia Baxley Perry (1870-1942). She lived here with her parents Edmond Baxley (1825-1905) and Mary Martha Ard (born 1825).
Elizabeth Hortensia's daughter Grace Perry remembered that the columns of the home were made from whole trees.
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