Rebecca “Reba” Wylie Grace

Rebecca “Reba” Wylie Grace

21 September 1884

Unknown

Nurse

Rebecca Wylie, who went by “Reba,” was born on 21 September 1884 to Sarah Seabrook Mitchell and Samuel Brown Wylie III. She and her family lived in the Wylie House until she was one year old, when they moved to another house in Bloomington and then to Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Reba’s father died suddenly five years later, and Reba moved back into the Wylie House with her grieving mother and siblings. Reba was 15 years old when her mother passed away in 1899. Reba graduated from Indiana University, where she was a member of the Sketchers' Club and Kappa Alpha Theta, in 1906. She lived at the Wylie House after college, and when her grandmother died in 1913 and the house was prepared to be sold, she followed her younger brother, Laurence, to Arizona. She worked as a nurse, first at Rodgers Hospital in Pima, and then at Arizona Hospital in Tucson. She may have first met her future husband, Harry E. Grace (1868-1954), while he was recovering from an automobile accident at the Tucson hospital in the winter of 1918. Reba continued working as a nurse until 1923, when she began traveling back and forth from the United States to Mexico with Harry. In 1925, it came out that she and Harry had been running a divorce business for wealthy members of Los Angeles society; they were establishing residency in Mexico for their clients to enable quick divorces. In 1926, Reba and Harry were married in Mexico City and appear to have remained in Mexico for the rest of their lives. Reba was still alive when Harry died in 1954, and her death date is unknown.

Found in the 1907 Indiana University Yearbook.