Stephens and Brown Family

Stephens and Brown Family

The first member of the Stephens family that would eventually be associated with Glendale came to Spartanburg from Charlotte before World War II. His name was Clarence Lanham Stephens and he worked in Spartanburg as a fireman. He, himself, was not connected to Glendale. He married Lelia Fowler and they had seven children. (Lelia's sister, believed to be named, Lolla, married a Fowler. Her son was Art Fowler, a famous baseball player and major league baseball pitching coach with the Yankees and many other teams. Art Fowler lived in Converse, SC until he died in 2006).

Six of Clarence and Leila’s children survived to adulthood. They were:
Herbert
Nanny
Clarence
Dewey
Clyde
Ebbie

Ebbie was born in the fall of 1918 just before Lelia Fowler Stephens died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.

After the death of Lelia, Clarence remarried to Beulah Cannon and they had six more children.
Clarence was a fireman in Spartanburg until he retired during World War II. He died almost immediately after he retired in 1944.

The only child of Clarence and Leila to become associated with Glendale was their son, Dewey.
Dewey married Bertha Cordelia Mott Stephens in 1933. During their courtship, Dewey rode from Spartanburg to Glendale on the trolley. Bertha, born in 1912, was the daughter of Edgar Mott and Lula Belle Brown Mott. Edgar Mott’s parents were from Pacolet. Dewey and Bertha Mott Stephens had two children, Bobby Gene and June Elaine Stephens. Bob Stephens contributed the details of the Stephens family for this web site.

Lula Belle Brown’s mother was from the Brown family of the Bethesda area. Lula Belle married Edgar Mott in 1900. Their daughter, Bertha Cordelia Mott, was born in 1912. There were no other children. Edgar and Lula Belle divorced sometime before 1935 and neither remarried. Edgar died in 1951 and is buried in sight of Pacolet High School.

Little is known about the family of Mattie Brown, the mother of Lula Belle. She lived in the Bethesda community and died there in 1939. Her funeral was at the Bethesda Baptist Church. The funeral of his great grandmother, Mattie, is the earliest childhood memory that Bob Stephens has. She was born the month the Civil War started in 1861. She had several daughters and sons.

Lula Belle Brown worked at Glendale as a warper operator until her retirement at age 65 in 1951. Dewey Stephens also worked there in the card room and Bertha Mott Stephens worked in the spinning room. Dewey was in the Navy during WWII. Both retired from textiles but not from Glendale: Dewey as plant manager for Surrey Industries near Winston Salem and Bertha from Milliken at Pacolet in the engineering department. Oscar Brown, brother of Lula Belle, was a member of the maintenance staff at Glendale as a carpenter.

Dewy and Bertha set up housekeeping in the Glendale community. Their house was across Lawson’s Fork Creek from the Mill. There were a number of other workers that lived in the same area that was known as “Gobbler’s Knob”. An old photograph shows a large foot bridge across Lawson’s Fork that could be used by these workers to get to the mill. This bridge and the mill dam were washed away in the flood of 1928.

Dewey and Bertha were divorced in 1963. Dewey remarried, but Bertha did not. He died in North Carolina in 1995. Bertha lived in the same house in Glendale from 1922 until 2002, a period of 80 years. Today, at age 95, still in excellent health, she lives with her daughter, June, in Duluth, Minnesota.

More details about both Bob Stephens and June Elaine Stephens can be seen in the Biography section of this web site at:
Bob Stephens
June Elaine Stephens Bowman

Thanks to Bob Stephens for sharing the story of his Stephens family.