Chris and Lowell Rutledge

Laura Christine Sobey was born to a farming family in the West Mountain area of Upshur County. She grew up the oldest of five living children. She married very briefly to Tug Salter, local boy, but the marriage ended badly. She went to business school and worked for Sun Oil until she met and married Lowell Edison Rutledge in 1943. Early in the marriage they lived in Panama, where Lowell was stationed as a Captain in the US Army. After discharge, the couple moved to Daingerfield, Texas where Lowell opened his own medical practice. Unable to have children of their own, they first adopted Steven Lee Rutledge in 1949 and Rosalyn Rutledge in 1952. Chris was a wife, mother and active in her community. After Lowell's death in 1988, she stayed in Daingerfield until her failing health caused her to downsize to a small condo in Gilmer, TX, where her daughter, Rosalyn Rutledge Alsobrook, could keep a close eye on her. Gilmer continued to be her home until her death in 2001.