Gussie Melissa Pierce Hunt

 

Gussie Melissa Pierce

Gussie Melissa Pierce was born on April 17, 1907. Atkinson, Georgia, on the family farm. She learned to drive by driving the tractor and the old field hand helped her learn to drive her daddy's truck when he was away from the farm. Her daddy, Samuel Pierce, didn't hold with women driving or cutting their hair or going to college.

She said she had to work in the syrup boiling shed and her long hair would get so sticky from the sugar, that one night, instead of tying it up in a net, (she was afraid not to wash it because she was afraid bugs would get in her hair at night. Grandma didn't like any kinds of bugs!) ,she got her mama's scissors and  cut it off up to her shoulders. The next morning when her daddy saw her hair, she said he had 3 kinds of fit.! She said that was the start of her leaving the nest. She later got a job in Brunswick at the Oglethorpe Hotel. It was a big fancy place. She worked in the dining room. That's where she met Albert, he was working on a dredge. She married Albert Solomon Hunt on June 7, 1927, in Brunswick, Georgia., at the home of her sister, Mrs. James Corbett Slaughter. Gussie was 20 years old.They had one child ,Charles Winston Hunt, Sr. Later, they moved to Port Wentworth, Ga where Albert worked for the Atlantic Creosoting Plant.  She died on January 28, 1998, in Savannah, Georgia, at the age of 90.
She was a wonderful cook and everyone raved over her fried chicken and shrimp salad!