ESSEX -- Funeral for Grace Barber of Essex will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Watkins and Sons Funeral Chapel in Dexter. The Rev. LeRoy Williams will officiate, with burial in Sunset of Memories Cemetery at Sikeston.

Friends may call at the funeral home after 11 a.m. Saturday.

Barber, 86, died Monday, Oct. 26, 1998, at Dexter Memorial Hospital in Dexter.

She was born Aug. 5, 1912, in Sardis, Miss., daughter of Herbert and Mary Agnes Anderson Minnifield. She first married Willie B. Hester in 1927. He preceded her in death. She later married Walter Barber Sept. 15, 1955. He died Jan. 26, 1984.

Barber lived in Mississippi and Arkansas before moving to the Morehouse area in 1940, and then to Essex in 1947. She was a member of Mt. Zion Church in Gray Ridge.

Survivors include a son, Lee Hester of Essex; two daughters, Christine Combs of Parma, Volla Bonner of St. Louis; two stepdaughters, Carrie Dumas of East St. Louis, Ill.; Rosalee Pratt of Chicago; 39 grandchildren; 94 great-grandchildren; and 39 great-great-grandchildren.