James Sidney Embrey is the son of Erma Dialthia Scott and James Ernest Embrey, who wed on September 28, 1924, in DeSoto, Mississippi, and had three children including James. His sister Elizabeth Janelle Embrey, was born five years after him on October 20, 1930 and his youngest sister Mary was born shortly after in 1931.
Erma Scott (James’ mother) was born in Tate, MS in 1900 and attended school until the 1st year of high school. After marrying James Ernest Embrey, Erma became a housewife, taking care of the children and managing the housework while James worked on the farm for approximately 4 hours a week, depending on the season, and estimated to work roughly 52 weeks a year, earning money to support the household as well and pay the monthly rent for the house they resided in.
The Embrey family and most relatives mainly worked as farmers on their own account to earn money for rent and basic necessities.
James Ernest Embrey (James’ father) was born in Desoto, MS to Fredrick Mortimer from Desoto and Rebecca “Lizzie” Elizabeth from Tate, MS. Frederick and Lizzie wed at the age of 19 and 16, respectively, and bore 5 children in 12 years- Melva, Affa, Viron, Horace, and James. They lived in a house that they owned, which was valued for $300 at the time, which would equate to approximately $5,500 in present times. He attended school until 8th grade before becoming a farmer.
Horace, James’ brother, later married Sadie Georgia Sowell and had two children, but passed away April 17, 1987, in Coldwater, Mississippi at the age of 70. He was also a farmer who worked an estimated 52 weeks per year on his own account and was buried at the same cemetery as his other family members in Coldwater, MS. His mother, Lizzie, passed away at Shelby, TN at the age of 79 and his father, Frederick, at the age of 73 at Tate, MS.
James Ernest Embrey himself passed at the age of 79 and his wife Erma at 87.
James Sidney Embrey’s sister, Elizabeth Janelle Embrey, was only five years younger than James but experienced the unfortunate loss of her sibling in WWII at the young age of fourteen. Four years later, she married John E. Forsythe, twenty years old at the time, who also served in the US military.
Forsythe served in the US military from August 1945 to September 1945 as a U.S Maritime Cook 3rd Class and was transported to France during his short month as a cook. Returning to his home in Massachusetts, he enlisted in the US Navy in September of the same year and entered active duty in October. After four years in the Navy, he briefly stayed in Mississippi and married Elizabeth Embrey on April 2, 1949 and was discharged in September of the same year at Memphis, TN, but re-enlisted one day later. In January of 1950, he was released from the Navy in Memphis and returned to DeSoto for the birth of his son James Sidney Forsythe on September 24, 1950, but then enlisted for the US Air Force in March of 1951.
Shortly after, Embrey and Forsythe divorced and he remarried one year later in Colorado to Harriet Greenberg, a Jewish-American woman who previously joined him at the Chateauroux AF Base. Thirteen years later, Forsythe divorced her as well and remarried in New York until his death in 1994.
After Embrey and Forsythe divorced, Embrey remarried six years later to Virgil Entriken who was also a US military vetern, but Entriken died six years later due to health issues. Six years after her husband’s death, Embrey’s only child James Sidney Forsythe died at the young age of twenty from a gunshot accident in DeSoto, MS.