1940

Mary Tabor was born in a little cabin in the Brush Creek Community of the western North Carolina mountains. She was in the fourth generation of Tabors to live there. She was the daughter of Nathan Elbert Tabor and Mary Ann Martha Davis. She never lost her love for those mountains even though she chose to leave them when she came of age to pursue a career. She had a greater ambition than to live the life that most mountain women had to live at that time. When she finished all the school available at home, she followed her brother John Anderson Tabor to the railroad and learned to be a telegrapher. She was a master with the morse code. She ultimately became station agent for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad in Patterson, Georgia, one of the first women in history to be given such responsibility.

She met William Jesse Lewis, also a telegrapher, while in training. They were married on 12 October 1911 and made their home in Patterson, Georgia. Mary had six children, five of whom grew to maturity. She had her hands full with a son and four daughters while keeping her job at the depot. Her strength of character was remarkable. She kept a close vigil on her daughters and always held them to a high standard of conduct, even after they became adults.

Life was not always pleasant. A tragic accident in 1919 took the life of Mary's second son. Little William Jesse,Jr. fell into an iron washpot full of boiling water and died as a result of his burns. She lost her husband in 1943 when her youngest daughter was only nine. In 1946 her house burned to the ground, and although no one was hurt, she lost many valued possessions. A passing freight train noted the fire and stopped so the crew could render assistance.

Mary never owned a car of her own. Her home was in the same block with the depot, so she could easily walk to work, and with a free pass on the train to anywhere she wanted to go, driving was unnecessary. She was a long standing member of the Patterson Baptist Church and belonged to the Patterson Garden Club and the Grandmother's Club. She loved to travel, and was always ready to go when someone suggested a trip or needed her. Her favorite saying was, "Have suitcase, will travel." She was always with her daughters when their children were born, regardless of the distance she had to travel to get there.

Upon retirement she sold her Patterson home and moved into an apartment in Brandon, Florida to be near daughter Ann. She continued to look forward to trips to the mountains and would climb those mountains with the vigor of a person half her age.

Immediately across the hard road from the Brush Creek cabin her husband built is a high mountain called the Pinnacle. When Mary was 80 years old, she climbed the Pinnacle, leaving her much younger sons-in-law panting behind. Her motto for mountain climbing was, "Just lean forward and bend your knees." When her health began to fail, she gave up the Brandon apartment and moved into Baptist Village Retirement Center near Waycross, Georgia where she died at the age of 95. She is buried beside her husband in the Lewis Cemetery at Raybon, Georgia in Brantley County.

Most of the information about the Lewis and Tabor family was preserved because of the efforts of this noble lady.

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