Susie Regina Banks
1891 - 1967

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.


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