Mamie Elizabeth Reynolds

From Buncombe Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Rice Reynolds, by Julian M. Pleasants

https://books.google.com/books?id=UqfqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=...

James M. Smith's daughter, Jane C. Smith, married George T. Spears, a native of Charleston, South Carolina. They had a daughter named Mamie Spears, the mother of Bob Reynolds. Joshua Reynolds, the paternal grandfather of Bob Reynolds, was an itinerant Methodist preacher who rode his horse all over western North Carolina, “with the Lord in his heart and his Bible in his saddle bag.” Joshua Reynolds produced a son named William Taswell Reynolds, an Asheville businessman and later clerk of the Superior Court, who won the heart and hand of young Mamie Spears. (Possible mistake in the oral family history - apparently, William and Nathaniel' s father and mother, Daniel and Susan, were married by an older brother who served as a reverend - his name, however, was John.)

William T. and Mamie Spears Reynolds had three children. In addition to Robert Rice Reynolds, there was a daughter who died early in life, and the eldest son, G. Spears Reynolds. Unfortunately, young Bob Reynold's father died when the boy was only 7. His mother tried to raise the family alone for a few years, and then married N. A. Reynolds, the brother of her deceased husband. Nathaniel Augustus Reynolds, or Uncle Gus, tried to act as a father to the young boy. But according to Frances Reynolds Oertling, Bob Reynolds' daughter, Bob and his uncle did not get along very well, and Uncle Gus had very little effect on Bob's formative years. Young Bob was raised primarily by his motgher and her grandmother.