Sybel May Grant was born in 1883 in Warren County, Virginia, according to the Virginia birth register. Her parents were James F. Grant, a farmer, and Anna Matilda Bard Grant. On her mother’s side Sybel was a descendant of veterans of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. She had an older brother and two sisters.
As young women, Sybel and her two sisters apparently could throw a good party. The Warren Sentinel, recounting a celebration that the trio arranged many years later as married women, explained that the “Three Grant Graces” had not “forgotten any of the arts, parts, or points of the hospitality which made their home at Wapping famous in the good old days, gone, alas, never to return.”
Sybel attended four years of college at Eastern College in Front Royal, according to the 1940 census and her obituary in the Washington Post. This almost certainly was in the early or middle portion of the first decade of the 20th century, judging from her subsequent job history. After graduating, she taught in public schools, including in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, according to her obituary. By 1908, she was teaching in Fairfax County Public Schools at the Brooklyn View School, according to the Fairfax Herald. The Brooklyn View School was at the intersection of Hunter Mill and Lawyers Roads, according to the Fairfax County History Commission. It remains today as a private residence. As of 1910, Sybel was back in Warren County, according to the census. She was teaching there and living with her parents. The census-taker’s somewhat illegible handwriting seems to indicate that Sybel was teaching at a private school.
We know from the Fairfax Herald that in 1912, Sybel was teaching at the Clarke School. She taught at Clarke for at least two school years, judging from various items in the Herald. While at Clarke, she was a member of boards and committees within the school system and participated in a Virginia convention of teachers, according to the Fairfax Herald. She managed the participation of the school and its students in community activities such as plays, spelling bees, and the county fair. Parents may have been divided in their opinions of Sybil, with some loving her and some less enthusiastic, judging from a pair of letters to the editor of the Fairfax Herald. By 1915, she was teaching at the Merrifield School for white children, according to the Herald.
During World War I, Sybel worked as a clerk at the War Department, according to her obituary. At the end of 1917, she married William Frederick Hellmuth, according to a son’s application to the Sons of the American Revolution. At the time, William was a US Army soldier, having enlisted in September 1917, according to Department of Veterans Affairs records. He served in the Army until early 1919, leaving at the rank of sergeant.
Marriage seems to have lifted four or five years of age from Sybel, at least for record-keeping purposes, presumably a manifestation of the social conventions of the era regarding age differences between spouses. Whereas Sybel was in fact born in 1883, in the 1930-1950 censuses she’s listed as having the same age as her husband. Her son’s application to the Sons of the American Revolution has the accurate day and month for his mother’s birthday but puts the year at 1888 rather than 1883. Sybel’s Social Security record and her gravestone provide the accurate year of birth for her, 1883.
In 1920, Sybel and William had the first of their two boys. The couple was renting on Columbia Road in Washington, DC. William was working as an electrical engineer for the telephone company, which appears to have remained his occupation at least until the 1950s. Sybel gave birth to her second son in 1923. In 1926, she and her sisters arranged a golden anniversary celebration for their parents in Warren County, according to the Warren Sentinel.
As of 1930, Sybel and William were living on Kenyon Street in Northwest, where they owned a house valued at $14,000. A half dozen lodgers also lived at the residence. Sybel is recorded as working on her own account, but the census doesn’t elaborate further on the nature of the work. By 1934, however, she was working as a clerk in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), according to a DC city directory. The AAA was among the more controversial New Deal organizations and had the mission of increasing agricultural prices by combating what was couched as overproduction.
By 1940, the lodgers were gone from the Kenyon Street residence and the family had a servant, a combination suggestive of greater prosperity for the couple in comparison to 1930. Sybel was working as a clerk for the Census Bureau. During the first half of the 1940s, Sybel and William must have felt some anxiety, despite their apparent post-Depression financial security, as well as a good deal of pride, because their sons served in the Army during World War II. Both young men survived the war. During the war, Sybel worked again for the War Department as a clerk, according to her obituary. Meanwhile, by 1942, Sybel and William were living on Ingomar Street in the Chevy Chase section of DC, according to William’s draft registration. By 1950, they had moved to Military Road in Chevy Chase.
The 1950 census does not list Sybel as working outside the home. However, she appears to have been very active socially. In 1950, for instance, she hosted a luncheon for which the ranking guest was the wife of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, according to the Washington Post. Judging from Sybel’s obituary and various newspaper articles, she was a member of more than a half dozen organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Political Study club, the latter focused on “the study of the United States government in its home and foreign relations (non-partisan),” according to the DC public library. The apparent importance of this work in her life is underscored by the headline for her obituary: after noting her name and age, it reads “Active in Patriotic Organizations.”
William died in 1973. The couple was still living on Military Road at the time of his death. Two years later, Sybel—by then in her early nineties—moved to Richmond. Sybel May Grant Hellmuth, 97, was living in Richmond when she died in 1980 of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, according to her death certificate. She is buried with her husband in Bethel Cemetery in Alexandria. Her gravestone reads, “Teacher Parent Patriot,” with “Teacher” harkening back to her time at the Clarke School some 60 years before.