My granny, Susie Regina Banks, was
born in Augusta, Richmond County Georgia on 4 August
1891. She was the second of seven daughters born to
William M. Banks and Alice V. Rutledge. She came to
Texas by covered wagon with her parents little more
than a toddler, and grew up in Williamson County
Texas near the little town of Briggs.
Susie, a farm girl, was tall with dark
hair and hazel eyes. Quiet and reserved, she was of a
more serious nature than her sisters. Perhaps due to
her early responsibilities of family. Not quite
sixteen years old when her mother died, and being the
oldest living child, it fell to her to help her
father with the younger
Family Photographs
She married Cyrus Waite Shelton in
1913. "Cye", born in Pulaski County
Kentucky on 20 August 1878, was the son of Fielden
Shelton and Lucinda Whitis. Some thirteen years older
than Susie, she was his second marriage.
Cye and Susie lived most of their
married life in Lampasas, Texas. He was a carpenter
by trade and helped to build some of the older houses
remaining there today.
They had four children: Floyd Phelan Shelton, b.
1914; Dayton Earl Shelton, b. 1916; Walker Banks
Shelton, b. 1917; and Leona Alice Shelton, b. 1919.
Extremely devoted to her sisters and
two brothers, they were a close family. I especially
remember with fondness the family gatherings of the
Banks siblings, which was often in my childhood. I am
grateful for the warmth and love they shared between
them, as it instilled within me a deep and abiding
love of family.
She was instrumental in the raising of
several of her grandchildren, this writer among them.
She nursed us through many childhood illnesses.
Sometime two or three of us at the same time, but she
never complained.
Her house was a refuge, whether you were sick in body
or heart, she was ever waiting to take you in, fix
your favorite food or put you to bed with a warm
vicks rag on your chest. Somehow you just knew you
were where you belonged, and no matter where I lived
or how far away, I never quite had that same sense of
home anywhere else.
Grandpa died on 13 December 1952 at
their home in Lampasas. He is buried at the Prairie
View Cemetery south of Briggs in Burnet County, where
most of our Banks family are buried.
Granny died on 6 September 1967 in
Lampasas. She didn't much care for the Prairie View
Cemetery, and so she is buried in the Watson Cemetery
between Lampasas and Briggs in Burnet County. Watson
is on the grounds of the Methodist Church where she
attended as a girl, and I guess it was a place of
happy memories.