COMPTON, Bessie Mae Sharp and 4 children The Pulaski Citizen 29 Mar 1944
A Giles County mother and four of her children were victims of the violent windstorm that demolished their home in the Lynnville section of the county on Sunday night.
The dead are Mrs. Isaac Newton Compton, 45, two daughters, Faye Jean, age 11, Margaret, 8, and two sons, William, age 13, and Richard, 6. Their bodies were hurld some 700 yards to the side of a hill at the back of the house by the wind which scattered the house and its contents over a wide area.
Two older daughters, Edith, 18, and Martha 15, were swept from their home into a cotton field about 150 yards from the house and did not know where other members of the family were. The younger girl, who was unhurt, dragged her sister, who was injured to the barn where they remained until daylight when Martha sought help at the home of Shirley Wilkes.
Neighbors, forming a searching party, found the bodies of Mrs. Compton and the four children scattered over the hillside several hundred yards at the rear of the home.
Besides her daughters, Martha and Edith, Mrs. Compton is survived by another daughter, Miss Evelyn Compton, of Lewisburg; and two step-daughters, Miss Mary Elizabeth Compton, Nashville and Mrs. J. D. Woodard of Lynnville; a step-son, Clayton Compton, of Birmingham; two sisters, Mrs. Mildred S. Jeter, Detroit, Mich., and Mrs. Reece Goldman, Lynnville; and three brothers, Dewey Sharp, Detroit, Oscar Sharp, Waco, and Charlie Sharp, Pulaski.
Mrs. Compton was the widow of Isaac Newton Compton, who died suddenly in December, 1943.
Funeral services for Mrs. Compton and the four children will be held at two o'clock Thursday afternoon at the Lynnville Methodist Church by the Rev. N. O. Allen, pastor. Burial will be in Lynnwood Cemetery at Lynnville.