The Many Roads of Wesley E. Williams
Born in Illinois just after the Civil War, Wesley Marion Edward Williams spent his life moving through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona as a farmer, carpenter, and possibly a preacher. His family story includes multiple marriages, a complicated affair with Mattie Donaldson, the birth of their daughter Olive, Rebecca Williams’s remarkable role in raising Donaldson children, and later ties between the Williams, Donaldson, and Morrow families. Wesley’s life ended in Phoenix in 1945 after nearly eight decades marked by movement, hardship, and tangled family connections.
Wesley Marion Edward Williams was born in Illinois in July 1867, into a family already marked by war and recovery. His father, Thomas Marion Williams, was only nineteen and had recently returned from the Civil War. His mother, Olive S. Williams, was seventeen and the daughter of the physician who had treated Thomas’s wounds after he came home.
In the fall of 1876, when Wesley was nine years old, the Williams family left Illinois for Boone County, Arkansas. Wesley made the move with his parents and his two little sisters, beginning a pattern of relocation that would follow him through much of his life.
On October 11, 1887, Wesley married Rebecca “Becky” Emeline Keeland. Their first three children were born in Arkansas, but the family did not stay in one place for long. The next three children were born in Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas, suggesting years of movement across the region.
By 1900, Wesley and Rebecca were living in Oklahoma. The census listed Wesley as a farmer, though later records describe him as a house carpenter. Family history also says he did some preaching, and that may help explain why the family moved so often.
Sometime between 1900 and 1903, the Williams family moved again, this time from Oklahoma to west Texas, settling near Santa Anna. There, Wesley’s life took a turn that would affect not only his own household, but the Donaldson family as well.
Wesley had an affair with Mattie, also known as Martha Ann Donaldson, the wife of Thomas Espa Donaldson, a preacher. Mattie and Wesley are said to have been married in late 1903, though no documentation has been found. The timing may have been connected to Mattie’s pregnancy, because on August 16, 1904, she gave birth to Olive Orethe Williams, named after Wesley’s mother.
Not long afterward, Mattie became ill with tuberculosis. She died when baby Olive, called Ollie, was only six months old. After Mattie’s death, Wesley and Rebecca reunited, and between 1906 and 1910 they had two more children together.
Thomas Donaldson was either unable or unwilling to care for his children. Family history says he had “gone off preaching again.” Homes were found for the children, including one in Rebecca Williams’s household. In a remarkable turn, Rebecca adopted two Donaldson children—Gladis Lee Donaldson and another child whose name is not known—and she also raised Olive, the daughter of Wesley and Mattie.
For the Donaldson children, the separation from their father left a wound. They felt abandoned by him, and it was several years before they reconciled.
The story grew even more complicated on October 21, 1905, when Thomas Donaldson married Wesley’s daughter, Juda Williams. According to the 1900 U.S. Census, Thomas was thirty-eight and Juda was only fifteen, though the marriage license listed her age as eighteen. Juda and Espa stayed together only a couple of years. When Espa remarried in 1908, he was taken to court on charges of bigamy because he was still married to Juda. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.
The Williams family later returned to Oklahoma and lived near Boswell. There, the Williams and Morrow families became closely connected. Bill Williams had a child with Lois Morrow. Empire Williams married Lois’s brother, Thomas. Juda married again as well, this time to I. M. Morrow.
By 1920, Wesley was living in Ranger, Texas, with a new wife, Myrtle Fitzpatrick. Olive was also in the household. In the 1920s, when Wesley was in his fifties, he moved farther west to Phoenix, Arizona.
What became of Myrtle is not clear, but by 1930 Wesley had married again, to a woman named Bessie. Bessie died that same year. In 1933, Wesley retired from his work as a carpenter. Around that time, he married once more, to a woman named Laura.
Laura remained with Wesley until the end of his life. After decades of movement, marriages, family ruptures, reconciliations, carpentry, farming, and perhaps preaching, Wesley Marion Edward Williams died on August 20, 1945, at the age of seventy-eight.