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Helen McKenzie-Peirce's avatar

Interesting read again ..

Cheers to you and Rosemary.

Helen,Australia 🇦🇺

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Ian D Richardson's avatar

Notes on telephone conversations between Ian Richardson and Mrs Vivian Dailey, 5151 South Main Street, Cowpens, South Carolina. August 9 & 10, 1999.

(Vivian Dailey's name came up as a sister of Jim Richardson's first wife, Ella Belle, in an obituary published in the Spartanburg Herald. Ian Richardson found her phone number in the Cowpens phone directory, listed on the Internet.)

"I am 81-years-old and still a member of the Cowpens City Council. I am the only one of Ella Belle's family still surviving. Jim and Ella Belle and his second wife lived next door to me.

"I suppose you know Jim was an alcoholic. He stopped drinking for awhile, but he took it up again after Ella Belle died.

"Ella Belle met Jim when he was stationed at Camp Croft [a military camp] near Cowpens. They became engaged before he went to war, and she promised to marry him when he came back, no matter what, which she did. He and Ella Belle couldn't have children because - perhaps I shouldn't mention this - half his penis was shot off during the war.

"Jim could be nice when he wanted to be, but he was abusive and could be violent. He was mean to start with [when he wasn't drinking] and very mean with the drink. I wouldn't have had him off a Christmas tree if he'd been covered in diamonds!

"Jim's second wife, Amy, only married him for what she could get, and when he died, she took or sold everything. We never got any of Ella Belle's things. Jim treated her and her two sons very badly, and once the police had to be called when he got his guns out and threatened to shoot the three of them.

"I never had anything to do with his second wife. I didn't like her. She is now living in Spartanburg.

"Jim always talked big, but he only hung around with `white trash'."

(Although this description of Jim is one-sided, it is mostly consistent with my own experience of him and from what others have told me over the years. Ian Richardson)

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