Biography by great-grandson Bryan S. Godfrey:

Mattie Elizabeth White Godfrey, my great-grandmother and the only great-grandparent of mine who was alive in my lifetime (even though all eight of my great-grandparents lived to ages of 72 years and beyond), was born 23 May 1891 near Weeksville in the southern portion of Pasquotank County, North Carolina, where her father ran a store. She was the eldest of the three children of Willie and Grizzelle Ellis White. Her mother was also a native of lower Pasquotank County, but her father came from Whiteston in northern Perquimans County, which was apparently named for his White family. The farm where she was born and raised was located near the intersection of Pear Tree Road and Palmer Lane, near the Weeksville Fire Department. Great-Grandma's brother Johnny inherited this farm, and the land is now owned by the heirs of his deceased granddaughter, Murna White Stevenson. The home burned down long ago. [Comment by Bryan Godfrey in 2017: I need to verify this, as my most recent understanding is that Uncle Johnny's land came from his wife's Meads side].

Great-Grandma was probably raised as a Southern Baptist, as in 1888 her mother's name was listed on a roll of Olivet Baptist Church in Pasquotank County, reproduced in a newsletter of the Family Research Society of the Albemarle. Many of her ancestors, including her paternal grandparents and the Pailins on her mother's side, had been of the Quaker faith.

Great-Grandma had a brother Johnny born in 1892 and a sister Willie who was born in 1894, less than two months before their father died at age 28. The cause of his death is unknown, as North Carolina was not recording deaths and births at that time. Aunt Willie had not been named yet when her father was dying, so they named her Willie Grizzelle after both her parents. It is remarkable that Great-Grandma would live to be 102 and her sister Willie would live to be 93. Uncle Johnny died of a heart attack at the age of 58, however.

On 5 July 1896, Great-Grandma's mother married Clarence Henry Jennings, who was born 12 February 1873 and died 16 February 1954. There were no children of this second marriage. Grizzelle, Clarence, and her children moved to Elizabeth City shortly afterward. Clarence was a difficult husband and stepfather. In this regard, Great-Grandma had an unfortunate childhood. She told her children that she often witnessed her stepfather beat her mother. When she was a child, she and her siblings would return from school hungry, but their stepfather kept the icebox locked. Grizzelle died 7 June 1922 at the age of 52. Clarence then married Mrs. Nora Wells Stevenson (1881-1955). Apparently he became more likeable in his later years and was a better stepfather to Nora's children than he was to the children of his first wife Grizzelle. Since Clarence outlived her mother by 32 years and remained in Elizabeth City, it is evident that my great-grandmother did not speak to him, for her children did not remember ever meeting him.

Although Great-Grandma lost both parents at young ages, her maternal grandfather, William Hithe Ellis, outlived her mother, living his later years in Norfolk, Virginia, with his second wife and family. He was killed by an automobile in 1926, at about the age of 79 or 80, while returning to Weeksville to visit family and friends, and was buried there, probably beside his first wife, Elizabeth Pailin Ellis, Great-Grandma's grandmother, who died when she was one year old, in the Old Episcopal Cemetery, also known as the Newbegun Creek Quaker Cemetery. It is most likely that two large boulders in that graveyard mark their graves. Because she was a great-grandmother when she died (and surprisingly not a great-great-grandmother yet), Great-Grandma saw six generations of her family.

It is not certain how much education Great-Grandma had, as her children disagreed over whether she quit school in the third or the seventh grade. It is likely that she remained in the home of her mother and stepfather at 300 Cherry Street in Elizabeth City until she married Gilbert Godfrey at the age of 22 in 1913. She met him at a church social.

My Aunt Alma vaguely remembered her mother sitting on the porch crying over the death of her mother and then going to see her grandmother decked out in the casket in the parlor of the home on Cherry Street. She recalled that her mother died of Bright's disease, a kidney ailment now known as chronic nephritis, and Grizzelle Jennings' death certificate lists the cause of death as cardiovascular and renal (failure?).

Great-Grandma nearly died from typhoid fever one summer around 1929, and she had to teach herself how to walk all over again. While recovering from typhoid fever, the community physician, Dr. Isiah ("Ike") Fearing (1869-1965), paid her a visit. She inquired why so many cars had gone past the house that day, and he replied, "Oh Miss Mattie, you haven't heard, the Only (Onley?) boys (a family that lived nearby) drowned, one went in after the other and they both drowned."

She was especially regarded for her cooking ability. She made almost all of her food from scratch, and is best remembered for her corn bread and baked apples. She cooked corn bread practically every day until she went into Guardian Care at the age of 94 in January, 1986. She never recorded her recipe, but fortunately my grandmother knew how to reproduce it and has taught me how. Her Carolina cornbread was very sweet and doughy, and to make it, Great-Grandma used hard homemade biscuits ground up and mixed with corn meal, sugar, eggs, homemade milk, and grease. In perfecting this recipe, my goal has been to make it appeal to the health-conscious young generations by minimizing the amount of grease used. I would also need to reduce the amount of sugar, something which I cannot compromise on because that, to me, is what makes it taste so great! When people ask where I obtained the recipe, and how fattening it is, all I have to say is that my great-grandmother cooked it nearly every day most of her adult life yet lived to be 102!

Great-Grandma's crude lifestyle on the farm contrasted greatly with the life of her younger sister Willie, who lived in Elizabeth City most of her adult life, where her husband, Bennie Meads, was a carpenter. Aunt Willie and her four daughters, Marion, Selma, Audrey, and Margie, enjoyed the advantages of city life, but they spent a lot of time with their Godfrey cousins on the farm nearby. Aunt Willie was very prim and proper, maintained a trim figure, and unlike her sister Mattie, she enjoyed dressing up, going out on the town in an evening gown, and other social niceties.

Great-Grandma's brother Johnny and his wife, Sallie, lived close by in Symond's Creek Township in lower Pasquotank County, and were also farmers. They had four children, Willie (a son), Shelton, Lillie, and John, Jr. Their family has suffered several tragedies. In 1939, when Willie was 22 years old, he was swimming near his home in the Pasquotank River and dived into the water, not knowing a stake was underneath. The stake punctured through his stomach, but he was able to push himself off, swim back to shore, and run home, but he only lived three days. Ten years later, Shelton's four-year-old son, Ernest Douglas White, choked to death on a toy balloon, an event which deeply affected Shelton for the rest of his life and deepened his religious convictions so much that he became a part-time minister, mainly at revivals. As already mentioned, Uncle Johnny died of a heart attack at the age of 58 in 1951. John, Jr. died of a cerebral hemmorhage at the age of 54 in 1980, and Shelton died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 69 in 1989. Of his five children, his widow, Dacie Meads White (1921-2003), outlived three of them. Shelton and Dacie White were especially close with his Aunt Mattie and Uncle Gilbert. They were regarded as true Christians in their community, and their sons, Ronnie and Wayne White, leased the Gilbert Godfrey farm after Great-Grandma and her son Carlton quit farming the land and went into the nursing home.

Great-Grandma was very old-fashioned. When my grandmother and her two sisters were young, they occasionally wanted to be tomboys and go swimming with their brothers in the Pasquotank River, but Great-Grandma was opposed to the idea of girls wearing bathing suits. She always wore farm-syle dresses and never wore pants her entire life. Once after my dad became an adult and dropped by to visit after fishing, she chided him for fishing on Sunday. Like most women of her generation, and my other three great-grandmothers, she never drove an automobile, as that was generally a task limited to the husband. She expressed disbelief in the wonders of modern technology, even though she witnessed more technological advances in her 102-year lifespan than had occurred in all previous centuries combined. When she was 12 years old, in 1903, the first known airplane flight occurred at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, just 40 miles from where Great-Grandma was living at Elizabeth City. In 1969, when she was 78 years old, Great-Grandma witnessed man's first trip to the moon, but she told my grandmother she did not believe it was real. When Grandma told her just to look at it on the television, Great-Grandma replied it was probably staged. She never cared for television or news. Great-Granddad bought a television for his living room in his later years, and especially enjoyed watching Saturday night wrestling. However, shortly after his death, it stopped working, and Great-Grandma never had it fixed or bought a new one. She was content sitting in her kitchen or on her porch in her spare time. But even in her later years, she kept herself busy by cooking and offering hospitality to visitors whenever they called. Sometimes others took advantage of her hospitality by calling on her frequently around meal time, perhaps because of loneliness.

Immediately after Gilbert's death, Great-Grandma lived with my grandparents in Newport News for a short while but soon returned to her farm. Uncle Carlton and Uncle Roy continued to run the farm, and Great-Grandma prepared the milk after they milked the cows. Roy and his wife, Jean Kay, moved to Sun City, California in 1980, however. Carlton and his wife Allie May lived on one side of his parents' farm, and Roy and Jean Kay lived on the opposite side. Carlton ceased running the farm and sold all the livestock shortly after his mother moved into Guardian Care, and he was in poor health for the last decade of his life and in 1991 also became a resident of Guardian Care, the same year Allie May died. Before she went into the nursing home, Great-Grandma and children hosted large family get-togethers every Christmas holiday. Of course, in her declining years, her children helped out with most of the cooking. She broke her hip in 1980 but recovered and was still able to live by herself afterward. Her children became increasingly fearful for her safety while she lived alone out in the county, but Uncle Carlton and Uncle Raymond looked after her. One time when Great-Grandma was in her eighties, she found a stranger, perhaps a vagrant, in the house, and simply replied, "You've got the wrong house." He left without hesitation, but this incident made her children fearful of her continuing to live alone. During winters, she slept in a bed in her kitchen beside her woodstove. My dad helped out a lot by chopping firewood for her each fall. In the fall of 1985, Hurricane Gloria struck, and my dad went down to the farm to prepare it in the event of hurricane damage by wrapping a chain around the house by driving around it with his truck. He asked his grandmother if she was prepared to get underneath the kitchen table in the event of severe storms, and she said she was. Fortunately, no damage occurred there.

I remember the tragedy Great-Grandma went through in 1983 when she lost her youngest daughter Hazel after cancer spread to her brain. She seemed to adjust well, possibly because she only saw her about once a year ever since Hazel moved to Rhode Island with her husband 40 years earlier. She did not feel like traveling to Rhode Island to visit her when she was ill or for her funeral. Besides losing her parents and brother at young ages, and losing her nephew Willie in 1939 after he dived into the water and a stake went through his stomach, outliving Hazel was the only major tragedy she lived through, and all of her other children lived into their eighties and beyond. At the beginning of 2007, I made a remark here that it was fortunate all 17 of her grandchildren and all of her 25+ great-grandchildren were living, but this was spoiled by the tragic, unexpected death of her granddaughter, Lynn Rosso Buechner (29 Oct 1952--9 Mar 2007) of Virginia Beach, Virginia, who was found by her husband sleeping for over 18 hours and was brain-dead by the time she arrived at the hospital. She was removed from life support three days later. Because she was an organ donor, an autopsy could not be performed, so the exact cause of Lynn's death will always remain a mystery, but it appears that she was recovering from the flu and aspirated in her sleep, which gave her pneumonia, and it is also possible she had overmedicated herself on pain killers as she had a long history of back pain and other health ailments. Aunt Alma, Great-Grandma's oldest child, was the same age when she outlived her daughter Lynn (92) as Great-Grandma was when she outlived Aunt Hazel.

Great-Grandma suffered a stroke in January, 1986, the same week as the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. My dad immediately visited her in the hospital, and on the day my brother and I were at home at our mother's apartment in Newport News, VA watching coverage of the explosion, my dad called us and said Great-Grandma was having great difficulty breathing and had lost the will to live since she would not be able to return to the farm. She was then placed in Guardian Care at Elizabeth City, only two miles from her farm. At first she was depressed and did not bother to get to know the other patients, but soon her health and spirit improved considerably. She was able to get around with a walker but was growing increasingly deaf. Her mind was still sharp, and she would remain in fairly stable condition for the next five years until she declined more after she turned 100 in 1991.

Remarkably, Great-Grandma was still able to enjoy family get-togethers even after she was 95 years old. For the Fourth of July, 1986, her grandson, Dr. Ritchie O. Rosso of Virginia Beach, Virgnia, hosted a family get-together at his home. Uncle Marvin brought Great-Grandma to Ritchie's. Her daughter Hazel had died three years earlier, and this was the first time most of Hazel's family had come back to visit. The next year, in May, 1987, my grandparents celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at Calvary Baptist Church in Newport News, Virginia, and Uncle Raymond and his wife Alma brought Great-Grandma, which was a great surprise to my grandmother. The day prior to the celebration we had all been in Elizabeth City celebrating Great-Grandma's 96th birthday. The family celebrated Great-Grandma's birthdays by bringing her to her home for three years after she went into the nursing home, but by the time she was 99 years old, she had lost interest in going back to the farm, so her 100th and 101st birthdays were celebrated at the nursing home. The home was damaged in 1990 by lightning which caused a fire in one of the upstairs bedrooms. By this time, the house was in such poor repair that the family abandoned all hope of restoring it, but we did make the bedroom weathertight since the furniture in the house had not been auctioned or split up yet.

Shortly after her 100th birthday, Great-Grandma fell and became weaker. She went through spells in which she refused to eat. Her son Carlton became a resident of Guardian Care and therefore spent a lot of time with her. A month before her death, she remained bedridden and could not eat. I last saw her alive on her 102nd birthday, May 23, 1993, eight days before her death. Most of her family came down to see her then, but as she was bedridden, there was no party. Her only words that day when I was there were "Where's Carlton?". Carlton spent most of his time at her bedside, but at that time had gone down the hall to hear the Sunday sermon. He was her main concern throughout most of her life, perhaps because she apparently felt guilty that she was not watching him when he wandered out into a pasture at age two and was stepped on by a horse.

Great-Grandma died on Memorial Day 1993 while Aunt Alma Rosso was at her bedside. Her funeral was conducted at Twiford Funeral Home's Downtown Chapel in Elizabeth City by Rev. Arthur Wilt, pastor of the church to which Uncle Carlton belonged, with burial following in New Hollywood Cemetery.

It is ironic that my Great-Grandma Mattie was the only great-grandparent alive in my lifetime, having lived until I was 20 years old, yet for many years after her death, I knew little about her family background relative to that of my other seven great-grandparents, and at the time of her death I only knew the full names, birthdates, and death dates of her parents and the first names of both sets of her grandparents. There are so many questions I wish I had asked her. I wanted to interview and tape-record her from the time I was thirteen years old, but her hearing was so bad that I feared I would be a nuisance, and I was too shy to admit to my family how much I was really interested in genealogy; my interest in genealogy began before age 13 but my persistence about it did not bloom until after I turned 18. I have long had trouble tracing back several sides of her family, including the Whites, Whiteheads, Ellises, and Pailins, even though most of Great-Grandma's ancestors had lived in Perquimans and Pasquotank Counties for many generations where the records remain intact and are very complete, with at least one side (the Garretts) residing in Camden County whose records were largely destroyed in the 1860s and in Currituck County. What has complicated tracing her ancestry, and required using indirect or circumstantial evidence to trace to some extent, is the fact that the marriage of her paternal grandparents, Doctrine and Catherine Whitehead White, was apparently never recorded, nor were the marriages of Doctrine's parents (Nehemiah and Elizabeth Perry White), and those of both sets of her mother's grandparents, Joshua and Mary Ellis and Henry and Frances Garrett Pailin. The White marriage more than likely occurred in Perquimans, and the Ellis and Pailin marriages in Pasquotank. It is only because of tradition among descendants of Great-Grandma's Aunt Henrietta White Hurdle that I learned in 1996 that Henrietta's mother, Doctrine's wife, was a Whitehead, because of the saying that she "lost her head when she married a White," and the 1845 Perquimans will of Catherine's maternal grandmother Elizabeth Willard Evans refers to a granddaughter Catherine Whitehead. It was not until 2019 that I discovered a deed involving her paternal grandparents, Doctrine and Catherine White, inheriting land from Catherine's parents, John and Mary Whitehead, the only legal document thus far proving this lineage. Thankfully, the 1834 Pasquotank will of Nehemiah White mentioned a wife Elizabeth and a son Doctrine R.P. White, and I accidentally discovered in 2003 that Elizabeth was a Perry by coming across an 1818 Pasquotank will of Cader Perry which mentioned a daughter Elizabeth White, a son Doctrine R. Perry, and the land of Nehemiah White. I discovered that Great-Grandma's maternal grandmother was a daughter of Henry Pailin and Frances Garrett in 1996 after hearing my grandmother refer to her mother having an Aunt Patty who was the mother of a Cousin Mollie Palmer of Weeksville whom Grandma claimed was related somehow on the Ellis side, and then finding the 1927 death certificate of Pattie Pritchard which listed Henry Pailin and Frances Garrett as her parents. From a White-Ellis-Jennings Family Bible that my grandmother copied, I knew Great-Grandma's mother had a half-brother named George Pailin who died in 1888, so I initially assumed Great-Grandma's Grandmother Ellis was first married to a Pailin, but her mother's death certificate lists her mother's maiden name as Elizabeth Pailin, forcing me to conclude George Pailin was her illegitimate son. Because there were earlier Nehemiah Whites in the Henry White family of Perquimans, which was Quaker, I was long fairly certain Great-Grandma's Whites were from that line, even thouugh there was also a Thomas White family that settled Perquimans in the 1600s. In 2018, after corresponding with a young researcher on several of our mutual lineages, he located an 1807-10 record of the estate of Robert White in which Nehemiah White was listed as administrator, and as Great-Grandma's great-grandfather Nehemiah White was the only living Nehemiah White in that area after 1806, it seemed safe to conclude our Nehemiah was son of Robert, who was son of Joshua, son of Nehemiah, Sr., son of Arnold, Jr., son of Arnold, Sr., son of Henry White, Sr. Later in 2018, I finally located estate records proving the parents of Great-Grandma's maternal great-grandfather Henry Pailin, enabling me to determine that her mother was descended two ways from her father's patrilineal ancestor Henry White, and from three families I long already knew were in the ancestry of my mother--the Overmans, Newbys, and Nicholsons. Thus, in the year that would have been my parents' 50th wedding anniversary had my parents not gotten divorced and had my father still been living, I determined my parents were ninth cousins two ways and eighth cousins once removed one way, all through common Quaker ancestors in Perquimans and Pasquotank Counties, in spite of the fact that my mother's immediate family was from Virginia and she had no idea she had ancestry in that area. I still have not, as of 2021, determined the origins of Great-Grandma's great-grandfather John Whitehead, but because Great-Grandma's son Marvin's autosomal DNA results match several descendants of the Arthur Whitehead family of Southside Virginia, I feel fairly certain John was descended from Arthur, especially since there was an earlier John Whitehead, grandson of Arthur, who married Miriam Murdaugh around 1774 in Perquimans, though he went back to Southampton County, Virginia where his 1791 will named a bunch of sons. Other families in Great-Grandma's ancestry that I have traced back to the 1600s include the Evanses, Jessops, Bundys, and Perrys on her paternal side, and the Garretts, Forbeses, Barcos, Torkseys, Scarboroughs, Moores, and Jenningses on her maternal side. The ancestry of her Grandfather Ellis is a complete blank before his parents' generation, and I don't even know the maiden name of his mother, who appears to have been born around 1832, meaning she would only have been about 59 years old had she been alive when Great-Grandma, her great-granddaughter, was born. Her Grandfather Ellis was probably orphaned, for he was living with a Markham family at the time of the 1860 Pasquotank Census. The greatest mystery about her Grandfather Ellis is why her children and nieces were unaware of him, their great-grandfather, being killed by an automobile in 1926 after I found out about him from a grandson of his second marriage in 1996, for several were born and should have remembered or heard about it. I have wondered whether she and her mother may have been estranged from her grandfather in his later years after he remarried a much younger woman the same age as his oldest daughter, had four more children, and moved to Norfolk.

One genealogy of another side of my family, written in 1889, says that change of residence is known to prolong life and enhance genetic strength in man as much as it is known to do in plants, apparently implying that members of the family whose ancestors inbred and did not migrate to other places did not live as long as those who moved around and had a less intermarried ancestry. However, the fact that Great-Grandma Mattie lived her entire life and died within ten miles of where she was born, is evidence that the author's supposition had exceptions. I have long believed that people who live in scenic places such as the Swiss Alps are the most likely to reach 100 as scenery can enhance one's attitude and will to live. The land in Pasquotank is not nearly as scenic, but Great-Grandma was surrounded by pastoral scenery until her last years.

Because all four of my grandparents were among the generation in America that underwent the transition from rural to urban life following the Great Depression and World War II, knowing Great-Grandma Mattie in my childhood, when she still lived on her farm, enabled me to appreciate the rural lifestyles that preceded "The Greatest Generation." I still remember the foods she cooked from scratch, the bed she slept on in her kitchen beside the woodstove, and the mechanical pump she used on the back porch for drawing water, beside which often sat a bowl of milk that Uncle Carlton brought inside after milking the cows. Although her house had electricity, is was used almost solely for lighting and kitchen stoves.

Even though her oldest great-grandson, my first cousin David Glenn Newton, was 32 years old when Great-Grandma died, she was not a great-great-grandmother until about three years after her death when my Aunt Hazel's first great-granchild was born in Rhode Island. But nevertheless, it is remarkable that Great-Grandma lived long enough to know six generations of her family, including her parents (not remembering her father since he died when she was three years old), her Grandfather Ellis (her Grandmother Ellis having died when she was a year old so I am not counting her), her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

The following is quoted from an article in the Elizabeth City, North Carolina, newspaper printed shortly after the celebration of Great-Grandma's 100th birthday in May, 1991, which I had the privilege of attending just one month before graduating high school:

A New Century:
Godfrey family takes pride in woman's special birthday
by Nancy Royden-Clark
Perquimans County reporter

Sunday was more than a 100th birthday party for Mattie White Godfrey. It was a celebration for a woman who continues to be the matriarch of a family that has spread its roots throughout the country.

"Her biggest hobby was being a mother and a wife. That took all her time," said Mrs. Godfrey's son, Marvin R. Godfrey.

Her birthday was Thursday, May 23, but family members celebrated Sunday with a party at Guardian Care Nursing Home in Elizabeth City.

Mrs. Godfrey was surrounded by family members from the Albemarle and as far away as California, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington, DC. Birthday cake, red punch and pink decorations flanked the dining room of the facility. The honoree was dressed "pretty in pink" as she was hugged and greeted by old and young relatives.

"Mattie lived in Pasquotank County all her life. She was raised near Weeksville and she married Gilbert Godfrey. She was married for over 50 years," her son said.

Mrs. Godfrey worked with her husband on their 200-acre farm. There they grew corn, soybeans, cabbage, sweet corn, potatoes, and cotton.

The much-loved woman was originally mother to four boys and three girls. Today Marvin lives in Fuquay-Varina; Carlton and Raymond Godfrey in Elizabeth City; Roy Godfrey in Sun City, Calif.; Katherine Godfrey of Newport News, Va.; and Alma Rosso of Norfolk, Va.

Mrs. Godfrey also has 17 grandchildren and about 22 great-grandchildren.

Marvin said he was happy to see his mother in good health today, especially since she worked long, hard hours as a farmer's wife.

"She keeps everything together. Her mind is still sharp. She can hear a little in her left ear and none in her right ear," said Katherine.

Not only was she a hard worker, she was also a good neighbor.

Mattie was also someone "city folks" counted on for fresh farm food.

"She always had chickens and biddies coming along. She also sold cream and milk. She worked in the Pasquotank Curb Market where each person had a table and they put in orders," daughter Katherine said.

Marvin said his mother was able to sew without any formal training, a skill that was necessary in tough economic times.

"During the Depression, ladies would pick prints on food bags, that would determine which bag to buy," he said.

Relatives also recall the time when the matriarch would hitch up horses to a buggy. Although she was not very interested in riding horses, she enjoyed driving the buggy.

Mrs. Godfrey attended Hall's Creek and City Road United Methodist Churches.

Below is Great-Grandma Godfrey's obituary from the Elizabeth City "Daily Advance":

Mattie W. Godfrey
...native of Pasquotank County
Mrs. Mattie White Godfrey, 102, died Monday, May 31, in Guardian Care Nursing Home.
Funeral services will be conducted on Wednesday, June 2, at 1 p.m. in Twiford Memorial Chapel, 405 East Church Street, with Rev. Arthur Wilt officiating. Burial will follow in New Hollywood Cemetery. The family will receive friends Tuesday evening from 7 p.m. until 8 p.m. in the funeral home.
Mrs. Godfrey was a native of Pasquotank County. She was a former member of Halls Creek United Methodist Church and the Marcie Albertson Home Demonstration Club.
Mrs. Godfrey was the widow of Gilbert Godfrey and the daughter of the late Willie and Grizelle Ellis White.
She is survived by two daughters, Alma G. Rosso of Norfolk, Va. and Katherine Godfrey of Newport News, Va.; four sons, Carlton Gilbert Godfrey and Raymond M. Godfrey, both of Elizabeth City, Marvin R. Godfrey of Fuquay-Varina and Roy F. Godfrey of Sun City, Calif.; and 17 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by a daughter, Ruth Hazel Procopio, who resided in Warren, R.I.

Most of the Gilbert and Mattie White Godfrey farm was sold late in 2011 and 2012 by their heirs. The home has been beyond repair for years but is still standing due to legal difficulties in having asbestos shingles removed. When the first parcel was sold late in 2011, my dad, G. Wayne Godfrey, a grandson of Gilbert and Mattie, was dying from a glioblastoma brain tumor, a very tragic time in my family. But a year earlier, in November, 2010, my brother Jason and I enjoyed walking the farm with our dad, his first cousin Dr. Ritchie Rosso, Ritchie's wife Barbara, and two of their three children, Annie and Nathan. Ritchie's mother, Aunt Alma, the eldest child of Mattie and Gilbert, died only 47 days before my dad, just a few weeks after the first parcel was sold, at the age of 97. In 2014, the only remaining portion of the farm that had not been sold, a timbered area, mainly swampland and therefore uninhabitable, southwest of the main farm, on the other side of Body Road and adjoining Simpson Ditch Road, was sold, and the Gilbert and Mattie White Godfrey estate was officially closed 21 or 22 years after her death. As executor of the estate, her son Marvin managed the affairs of the farm until it was sold, and the sale and closing of the estate were handled by his lawyer son, David R. Godfrey of Apex, North Carolina.

In November, 2017, the last of Great-Grandma's seven children, the two youngest, passed away thirteen days apart, when Uncle Roy died in California at age 87 and then Uncle Marvin was killed in a car accident at age 90 the day after Thanksgiving while heading to his girlfriend's house in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina when he pulled out onto the highway off his street and was struck by a Food Lion tractor trailer that he apparently could not see because of blinding sunlight. Ironically, Great-Grandma was about two months pregnant with Uncle Marvin when her Grandfather Ellis, about 80 years old, was killed by an automobile while walking down a road at night, and 90 years later, Uncle Marvin himself would be killed inside an automobile by a much larger truck.