My Great Aunt Mattie had red hair and blue eyes and it is said that she was very pretty as a young woman but she never married. When her mother Elmira died, she was not quite 11 years old. She would become in effect a little mother to her younger siblings, Truda 9, Tom 8, Jim six, and Ella 4. She was a good cook, housekeeper and seamstress, earning a living sewing for the public. She had lots of boyfriends and opportunities to marry but felt that she was needed where she was. She was still at home with her father Samuel in 1910 along with brother Jim and his family. In 1920 after Samuel had died, the U. S. census shows her living with sister Truda Thompson and her husband Coleman. When the Coleman's moved to Kerens, TX in 1924, Mattie went to live with her brother my Granfather Jim Rose and his family and then on to take care of her oldest sibling, her sister Rhoda Emiline(Emmy Rose) Goode, until Emmy's death. Aunt Emmy had athritis from the time she was in her late teens and was unable to walk. After that Aunt Mattie would live alone for the rest of her life. My Grandfather Jim would always look after her and see that she was ok. After his death in 1963, her nieces and nephews, including my father J. B. Rose, were all more than happy to have the baton passed to them because they all loved Aunt Mat. An envious neighbor, Mrs. Britton, once commented "You have so many nice nieces and nephews, why don't you dole them out to your neighbors?".

Aunt Mattie received her sister Emmy's large farm of about 120 acres after Emmy's death in 1937. Emmy had no will and had no children. At that time the farm legally would have gone to her deceased husband Dick Goode's relatives consisting of five brothers and sisters. In an extreme act of kindness that rarely happens, they signed the farm over legally to Aunt Mattie out of consideration for her taking care of Emmy for those many year. This act in time allowed her to be independent the rest of her life, but she would always be frugal whether she needed to be or not. Her relatives got her an air conditioner but she would not use it. She never really wanted a bathroom in her house nor a bathtub. She used to tell the family that she never got in a bathtub but once in her life and she didn't like it. Even though she did not use it she was always a neat, well-dressed and a very clean person. Aunt Mattie blessed her extended family in many ways, but the probably the most cherished blessing was that in the early days she had a Kodak box camera and took a lot of pictures which gave us the images of family members of those bygone years.

Toward the final years of her life Aunt Mattie fell in the floor and could not get up. She did not even try to get to the phone and spent 2 days there before someone found her. Eventually she had to go to the nursing home. Power of attorney and guardianship was given to nephew J. B. and her house was kept up by the neices and nephews and their spouses. It was a sort of love by committee. She would visit her house on occasions but would always return to the center when it was "supper time". Aunt Mat died in 1977 at age 94 after spending 4 years in the Athens, AL Convalescent Center. Her dedication to all her family was evident in her will. Every niece and nephew, some she had never seen, was to share in her estate She had wanted every one of her siblings and their children to know that she was thinking of them. She was laid to rest near the graves of her brother Jim Rose and his wife Flora in Dement Cemetery.


This celebration of the life of Martha Rebecca Rose would have not been possible without the research efforts of Aunt Mattie's great nephew Lynn Parham.