(Caption: The remains of this vice presidential grandmother-in-law are interred at the Liberty Cemetery in Parksley.)
Here’s a piece of Eastern Shore of Virginia history I’d never heard:
The wife of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew had deep roots in Accomack County.
Some on the Eastern Shore probably all ready knew this. I might be late to the obscure information party.
One of Spiro Agnew’s grandmothers-in-law died 50 years ago at what was then called the Hermitage in Onancock. Her body is interred at Parksley’s Liberty Cemetery.
Parksley — and the Williams-Parksley Funeral Home — were in the national news when Stella Scott Judefind died at the age of 94 in August 1970. The story from the Baltimore Sun is below.
The late Mrs. Judefind was a grandmother of Elinor Isabel “Judy” Agnew, the Second Lady of the United States from 1969-1973.
Death certificates online show the Second Lady’s great-great grandfather was a Scott from Chesconnessex, and her great-great grandmother was a Lankford from Guilford.
The life and times of the former Second Lady are an interesting read. She died in 2012.
Agnew, as most know, was a former governor of Maryland who resigned as vice president. He was replaced by Gerald Ford.
Agnew was later a businessman with a summer home in Ocean City, Md. He died in 1996 at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin.
Her grandfather, the Rev. William B. Judefind, was a Methodist minister and was pastor of the Parksley charge in the early 1900s. He left for Lynchburg in 1906 but moved back to the Eastern Shore years later.
They settled again in Parksley in 1941 — roughly when Judy Agnew was about 20 and living in Maryland. She married Spiro Agnew a year later.
Is it a stretch to think the future vice president visited Parksley to see his wife’s grandparents?
And because Judefind died while Agnew was still in office, is it a stretch to think a sitting vice president and his wife came to the Eastern Shore for a funeral?
Maybe somebody knows the answer.
