CLINTWOOD – Local genealogist and historian, Hetty Sutherland, of Dickenson County, Va., died June 6, 2004, at the age of 102.

Hetty was born Dec. 14, 1901, at Osborns Gap, Dickenson County, to Milburn Eddie and Ardelia Austin Swindall. Her first business job was secretary to Lawyer John Flannagan, later Congressman for the Ninth District of Virginia.

In 1926, she married Elihu Jasper Sutherland, lawyer, judge, historian and genealogist, and settled at their home, "Sunset Hill", in Clintwood, where he lived until his death in 1964, and where she lived the rest of her life. Hetty was a charter member of the Southwest Virginia Historical Society, the Dickenson County Home Demonstration Club and the Dickenson County Historical Society, which honored her by establishing the "Hetty Swindall Sutherland Archives" at the Library in Clintwood. She published her late husband's information on the Counts family and related families in Some Descendants of John Counts of Glade Hollow (Southwest Virginia) 1722-1977 and, in 2004, published a larger supplement to this book. With Gregory and Joan Short Vanover, published Pioneer Recollections, personal interviews with pioneer citizens of Dickenson County, collected by her late husband. In 1996, she published Swindall-Austin Families of Virginia and North Carolina 1622-1995, information she had collected.

Hetty is survived in death by a sister, Lora Anita "Betty" Swindall Hibbitts, of Clintwood; two sons, William Sutherland and his wife Thora McElrath Sutherland, St. Paul; James Sutherland and his wife Marjorie Ann Pearson Sutherland, Clintwood; two grandchildren, Sharon Sutherland of Georgia, and Susanne Sutherland and her husband Micheal Frame, and her great-grandchildren, April Beth Frame and Ian Sutherland Frame of Telluride, Colo.

She was preceded in death by her husband; her parents; and eight siblings, William Theodore "Ted" Swindall, Flora Etta Willis, Arnold Joseph Swindall, Leonard Bruce Swindall, Arizona Powers, Robert Ervin Swindall, Lyle Noel Vernon Swindall and Nile Austin "Jack" Swindall.

Pallbearers are Freddie Mullins, Gary Mullins. Larry Mullins, Richmond Short, Russell Sutherland and Leonard Douglas Swindall. Honorary pallbearers are her nephews and grand-nephews.

Hetty requests that there be no flowers, except one pink rose, and that donations be made to the charity of your choice.

The family will receive friends after 7 p.m. Thursday, June 10, at the Clintwood Funeral Home. Funeral services will be conducted at 11 a.m. Friday, June 11, at the funeral home, with Minister Darrell Davis officiating. Burial will follow in the William Sutherland Memorial Cemetery, Fairview, on Frying Pan Creek, Dickenson County.

Clintwood Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.