"Aunt Connie," or "Miss Lurline" as she was widely known, never married. A favorite family story is that she had a beau and would have married, but that her suitor, when invited for dinner with her family, did not have sufficiently proper table manners. She disliked her given name of "Cornie" and insisted that people address her as either "Connie" or "Lurline." Connie moved with her parents and siblings from Opelika, Ala., to near Quanah, Tex., in 1889. While there, she attended Randolph-Macon Women's College in Virginia. A few years after her mother's death in 1897, she, her sister Cora, and their father returned to Roanoke AL where their brother, Roland, owned a hardware store. In 1907, Connie and Cora purchased the Randle house (now known as the Griffin Home) on West Point Street in Roanoke. When built, the house had gables. Connie and Cora remodeled it, replacing the gables with the large white columns which currently grace the front of the house and adding a large room where Lurline taught kindergarden. In addition, she taught first grade in the Roanoke Normal College which later became Handley School. Her brother H.L. "Boy" Griffin Jr's children came from Texas at various times and lived in the house during part of their high school years and, again, during their early married years when a number of their children were born in the home. When Connie was in her seventies, she fell and broke her hip. At this time she was living alone in the house, and her nephew, Houston Lamar Griffin III, his wife Nancy, and their daughter Glenda moved in to take care of her. Glenda inherited the home at Miss Lurline's death in 1955.
"Aunt Connie," or "Miss Lurline" as she was widely known, never married. A favorite family story is that she had a beau and would have married, but that her suitor, when invited for dinner with her family, did not have sufficiently proper table manners. She disliked her given name of "Cornie" and insisted that people address her as either "Connie" or "Lurline." Connie moved with her parents and siblings from Opelika, Ala., to near Quanah, Tex., in 1889. While there, she attended Randolph-Macon Women's College in Virginia. A few years after her mother's death in 1897, she, her sister Cora, and their father returned to Roanoke AL where their brother, Roland, owned a hardware store. In 1907, Connie and Cora purchased the Randle house (now known as the Griffin Home) on West Point Street in Roanoke. When built, the house had gables. Connie and Cora remodeled it, replacing the gables with the large white columns which currently grace the front of the house and adding a large room where Lurline taught kindergarden. In addition, she taught first grade in the Roanoke Normal College which later became Handley School. Her brother H.L. "Boy" Griffin Jr's children came from Texas at various times and lived in the house during part of their high school years and, again, during their early married years when a number of their children were born in the home. When Connie was in her seventies, she fell and broke her hip. At this time she was living alone in the house, and her nephew, Houston Lamar Griffin III, his wife Nancy, and their daughter Glenda moved in to take care of her. Glenda inherited the home at Miss Lurline's death in 1955.
Family Members
Siblings
