Victoria was born in Bienville Parish in a dogtrot house to Charlie and Violet Ashley Bush as one of ten children. She worked in the family's cotton field with her father, attended Springhill School through the fourth grade, and married Mack Reliford at 17. He farmed and made crossties. She remembers preserving meat in a smokehouse and keeping milk cool in the well. They made chitterlings when they killed hogs in fall, grew sugar cane and cooked cane syrup, and ground corn at a mill. She and Mack had seven children.