Carl, Andy, and Geneva Nunn Griffith in 1957.
Often at book events I will tell potential
customers of Beyond Mayberry: A Memoir of
Andy Griffith and Mount Airy, North Carolina, that “Andy Griffith’s Momma
Was A Nunn.” The look on their faces never ceases to make me laugh. I then tell
them, “She was a Kibler Valley Nunn, not a Catholic Nun.”
Several years ago, I found myself
rummaging through the papers of the Patrick County Courthouse. As a lark, I looked up the last
name Griffith and, lo and behold, there was a marriage license dated August 22,
1925, between Carl Griffith (1894-1975), a laborer, age 30, the son of
John D. and Sallie Griffith of Mount Airy and Geneva Nannie Nunn (1899-1986), age 26, the daughter
of Sam and Mary Jophina Cassell Nunn of Patrick County. The Reverend J. S. Rodgers of the Methodist South Church married the
couple in Patrick County, probably in the town formerly known as Taylorsville,
now Stuart, Virginia, on
August 22, 1925. John Clark of the Circuit Court of Patrick County filed the
document.
Mary Jophina (Jopina or Jossina or “Jo
Pinney”) Cassell Nunn (1866-1938) was the daughter of Peter Cassell and Nancy J. Rogers. Samuel “Babe” Nunn (ca. 1850-1905) was the
son of John and Scenna Phillips Nunn. Andy Griffith’s grandparents were
married on February 14, 1886, in Stokes County, North Carolina, and are buried
at Old Hollow Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in Mount Airy.
In 1925, Samuel Walter Nunn owned 122 acres, nine miles from the
courthouse in Stuart. The family
cemetery is located near Virginia Route 631 between Kibler Valley, where the Dan River rolls off the Blue Ridge
and Fall Creek.
Sam Nunn ran a sawmill on Fall Creek, a tributary of
the Dan River near where the Mount Airy and Eastern Railroad, “The Dinky” ran
from Mount Airy to Kibler Valley in Patrick County, Virginia. One
story told me by the late Colonel James Love of Patrick County was that Andy’s
grandfather murdered a man and made a deathbed confession about it. Fall Creek
falls from the Blue Ridge Mountains before making its way to the Dan River near
the Command Sergeant Major Zeb Stuart Scales Bridge on Highway 104, the Ararat Highway.
Geneva Nunn Griffith brought her Patrick County musical roots with her and she taught her son
to play guitar. Andy Griffith was on the Crooked Road, the Virginia Musical
Heritage Trail before anyone thought it up. This is just one of the many
connections Andy Griffith had to Patrick County.
Colonel James Love told me that he had
taken Andy Griffith around to visit family sites and cemeteries quietly. Sadly,
Jim and Andy are no longer with us, but the family history and genealogy still
survives.
Other Andy Griffith’s Patrick County Connections
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