It’s time for a deep dive down the Williams rabbit hole, which I haven’t done for quite a few years. The Williams clan – my husband’s great grandmother was a Williams – kept me obsessed for years because, as a group, they wee a tough nut to crack. I was determined that they weren’t going to stop me from building their family tree just because they repeatedly used the same given names and moved all over the place, including to burned counties.
Mathias Williams was born on 13 December 1803, thanks to a family Bible, likely in Roane County, Tennessee, where the family first settled by 1803. He married twice, first to Rebecca Davison, on 21 November 1825, in Roane County, but settled next door to is father in Marion County, Tennessee, where he lived until c1849, when he appears back in Roane County, taxed but owning no land. He married (2) Millie A. Elizabeth Shackelford, 30 August 1855, also in Roane County, where the family lived until Mathias died in 1884.
Mathias had six children with Rebecca and ten more children with Elizabeth and picking up their trails hasn’t been easy. Hence the reason for a new deep dive into his family.
Posts in the near future will provide family sketches of his children after they married, but two of is three youngest children have been mysteries up until now, so today’s post will examine their lives.
The life of John F(ranklin) Williams is somewhat simpler to explain than that of Sophia, so let’s begin with him. John F. Williams appears in the 1880 census of Roane County, Tennessee at home with his parents and siblings. The census taker noted that John was 4 months old and born in January 1880.
John next appears in the 1900 census of Roane County, boarding with the Thomas Ingram family and working as a farm laborer. He is single, aged 20 years old and born December 1879.
The last record in which John is found is his marriage record. John F. Williams married Minnie Garrison on 3 June 1914, McMinn County, Tennessee.
Neither John nor Minnie has been found in 1920. However, in 1930, Minnie Williams, divorced but born c1896 in Tennessee, is living in Chicago, Cook, Illinois with her unmarried sister, Nora Clementine Garrison, in an apartment house with other lodgers.
Minnie’s son, John F. Williams, is living with her, aged 12, so born c1918. Minnie died before 1940, when John lived with his aunt, Nora Garrison, at 1035 W. 35th Place, Los Angeles, California, which is just west of the USC campus. At the time, he was a student at USC. John served in the Army for 3 years during World War II and died 22 February 1986 in Los Angeles County, California. It appears he never married and has no descendants.
Thus, unless John F. Williams Sr. remarried a much younger woman and had more children, it appears that he has no living descendants today.
Sophia A. Williams, sister of John F. Williams, was also a mystery to me, as she only appeared as the 4 year old daughter of Mathias and Elizabeth Williams in the 1880 census of Roane County, Tennessee.
Time is often a genealogist’s friend and, for me, it opened the door to Sophia’s life when this interesting death record was finally linked to her 1880 census record:
Sophia died at the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix, but her home was in Warren, which is a neighborhood in Bisbee, Cochise, Arizona AND she was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Bisbee! That’s an enjoyable day trip from Tucson, as Bisbee today is a cute historic town with fun shops. However, it turns out that a trip to Bisbee isn’t necessary, as I phone the city and got a very nice, very helpful lady in the Public Works Department, which handles the information for Evergreen Cemetery.
Next up will be the family sketch of Sophia A. (Williams) O’Neal, daughter of Mathias Williams and Elizabeth Shackelford of Roane County, Tennessee.