Carroll

1906 - 1998  
Reaves - Velma Dickens Reaves, died on April 17, 1998 in her home at Cypress village, Jacksonville, Fl.  Velma was born July 6, 1906 in Portales, New Mexico, daughter of Edd and Pearl Dickens, New Mexico pioneers.

Velma was educated in Albuquerque and worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture there before moving to Washington D.C. to work in several Government libraries including the Department of Agriculture, the Justice Department of Agriculture, the Justice Department, Bureau of Management, and was responsible for setting up the Library in the Pentagon when it was built.  She was the Chief Librarian at the Department of Agriculture Library when she retired from government service and moved to Jacksonville.

Velma was a member and past president of the American Libraries Association.  Mrs. Reaves was past chapter Regent of the Jacksonville Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.  She was past Regent of the Jacksonville area Magna Carta Dames and Barons.  She was a member of the First Families of Virginia, the Colonial Dames of the XVII Century, the Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in Virginia and several Genealogical Societies.  She was an avid genealogist and had written a book for beginners in connection with the Southern Genealogical Exchange.

She is survived by 2 daughters, Virginia Lane and her husband Dr. John G. Lane, and Frances Young and her husband Arthur L. Young, Jr.; 8 grandchildren, Cynthia Lane, Julianne Otto, John Jeffery Lane and Mary Lane Singletary, Dian Merchant Doak, Marcia Seifert, Kristina Carroll and Mark D. Merchant; 10 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren.

Services will be held at 3:00 p.m. Tuesday in the chapel of George H. Hewell and Son Funeral Home, 4140 University Blvd, So. with the Rev Dr. John H. Swann of Palms Presbyterian Church officiating. Burial will be at Arlington Park Cemetery.

Article from Southside Neighbor, Jacksonville, FL, Wednesday, December 12, 1984

Arlington Artist Tells Ancestry With Her Tapestry
By Shirley Rehberg, Neighbor Staff Writer

Velma Reaves, a genealogy aficionado, decided to trace her family background and put her findings in a tapestry. Orange Park artist Martha Webb painted the canvas, using a central theme of a Southern belle and a Westerner on horseback. The 4-by-6-foot canvas took several years of work to complete and Mrs. Reaves has only just begun to stitch the piece.

In her travels, Velma Reaves saw many tapestries filled with small pictures that often seemed to have no connection to the whole. Intrigued with these stitched works of art, the Arlington resident decided that she would have her own tapestry.

A genealogy aficionado, it was only natural that such a tapestry tell the story of her ancestry, but she quickly found that she had a lot more roots than would fit on a canvas - even a large canvas.

She took the entire project to Orange Park artist Martha Webb and together they worked out initial drawings for the canvas, but some ideas had to be scrapped along the way. For example, Mrs. Reaves wanted the border of the wall hanging to be of grapevine, which is the symbol of the family unit, with a family crest in each corner of the piece. The grapevine was overpowering and had to be scratched for a more simple border.

"A lot of things like that had to be changed," Mrs. Reaves said.

The wall hanging - a 4-by-6-foot handpainted canvas - took several years of work to complete, and Mrs. Reaves has only just begun to stitch the piece.

She wanted a central them and settled on a Southern belle and a Westerner on horseback as the focal point of the canvas.

"Of course, all of this is symbolic. Actually, the Southern lady represents my mother, who was born and reared and married in Mississippi. The Western man became her husband and sons who were Western cattlemen."

The couple separates the canvas into East and West. The East side of the canvas traces Mrs. Reaves ancestors all the way back to Great Britain and includes a fortified English home, built on the hillside by a stream of water.

"Houses such as this were built so they could see approaching enemies from every side and by a stream which was used for transportation."

Beneath this scene is a cathedral, included because an ancestor was a bishop of London, and below that scene is one depicting the adventurers who sailed to the New World, replete with a log cabin and spinning wheel.

A colonial mansion and the U.S. Capitol complete the Eastern side of the canvas, which opens up as the western migration of her family begins.

The Western side has windmills, used for watering croplands, grazing cattle and the thick adobe architecture of the Southwest. The open spaces include sandstone cliffs and great mountains as the canvas leads the eye to the West Coast and the Golden Gate bridge where Mrs. Reaves daughters were born.

An airplane represents the many trips she made between coasts as she traveled to her work in Washington, D.C.

After she retired about 15 years ago, Mrs. Reaves came to Jacksonville and settle into the Jacksonville Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and immersed herself in genealogy.

"Genealogy - that starts as a hobby and it grows and grows until it get to be an addiction," she said. "You just can't turn it loose."

Having traced her ancestry clear to King John of England, who signed the Magna Carta in 1215, Mrs. Reaves says her next project is to get all her notes down on paper in a book, but that will come after she finishes the needlepoint canvas, which she hopes to do in a couple of years "if I work real hard."

However, as regent of her DAR chapter and regent of the Magna Carta Dames, Mrs. Reaves finds she doesn't have a lot of time to stitch her masterpiece. She tries to do a little on the canvas each night.

"Even if I only do one row, it's that much more done," she said.

And it will be a treasured heirloom once it's completed, although for Mrs. Reaves it has become a work of love.

"I'm doing it for my own personal pleasure," she said.

Back to my wife's lineage.

Collecting Our Kin: A Family History Collection, copyright 1998-2007, is a not-for-profit, personal, on-line genealogy project, formatted and presented by James H. Carroll, Goodlettsville, TN.  Excerpts and contributions from other sources have been used sparingly and with appropriate credit given. You are welcome to copy information found at this site for personal use and share information with other researchers or genealogical organizations, but this information may not be sold or used in a commercial project without expressed permission.