EATHEL VIRGINIA PERSON
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BII  EATHEL VIRGINIA PERSON was born December 13, 1892 in Van Buren County,  
Arkansas on White Oak mountain. She was the seventh child of  Edward Randolph 
and   Jennie Bell Smith Person.
     
Her personality and pleasing disposition won her the favoritism of every member of 
her family, including the in-laws, in the short 29 years of her life.
    
She attended school on the mountain and when she was older she attended school at 
Clinton, Arkansas, also Atkins and Appleton along with a brother and sister. She 
taught several terms of school. When young, she was very fond of  William "Bill" 
Masters. They planned to marry but her parents objected because their mothers were 
cousins. While attendind school in Clinton she had another beau,  Herbert "Hub" 
Frazier, and her sister,  Adelaide, courted  Burt Bradley.
    
Also when very young,  Eathel and  Adelaide moved to Little Rock and worked as 
cashiers at the Marion Hotel. The hotel still stands in 1968. There had another serious 
courtship that was ended by a local 'gossip' who reportedly spread the falsehood that  
Eathel had a child living in the mountains with a brother's family. The 'gossip' was 
vicious because  Eathel did not approve of her dating  Rueben Person. His name was  
Vivian Daniel.

She visited the mountain quite frequently while she was working in Little Rock. 
There she met  James Walter McPherson who had come from Lurton, Arkansas, to 
remain awhile at the Mountain Ranger Station to mark timber for the government. 
On July 31, 1921 they were married in Appleton enroute to his home at the Lurton 
Ranger Station.

She visited her home two or three times during her 11 months marriage. On her last 
trip to visit,  Clarence "Pad" Person, her five year old nephew, went home with her. 
While he was visting her home she was taken to Russellville, Arkansas for an 
appendectomy. On June 14, 1922 she died of peritonitis which had already set in before 
the operation. Her funeral was in her mountain home and her burial was in the New 
Hope cemetery. She had no issue.

Her obituary read in part "her death was extremely sad in that it blights the hopes of 
an admiring young husband and breaks the family ties in the parent's home, taking a 
loving daughter and a devoted sister from her brothers and sister."