BISCUITS, BOARDS, AND BABIES - Henry Dies had enough children to field a football team and a baseball team, with one more for good measure. In 1917, Dies was the father of twenty-one children, seventeen sons and only four daughters. Another son died soon after becoming of legal age. His living issue ranged in age of 18 to 49. And, if that wasn't enough mouths to feed at Thanksgiving, Dies had sixty-four grandchildren. Of course, Dies had help in raising nearly two dozen children. And the credit for this record should not go to him, but to his two wives who nurtured an army of children.
Dies, who at the age of fifty-six fathered his last child, moved to Dublin from his native Sparta. He reported that he was healthy, never being sick, not even ever suffering from a headache, backache, or toothache. At six feet, three inches tall, the 180-pound behemoth board sawyer was the self-proclaimed champion biscuit eater of Laurens County. Two of his children ate their share of biscuits, covered with butter and gravy. William Dies, of Atlanta, topped the scales at 475 pounds, while one daughter, Mrs. Katie Dyal of Augusta, weighed a walloping four hundred and forty-four pounds. Remarkably, the other 19 Dies children were of normal weight. Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 25, 1917.
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