52 Ancestors: When Silence Speaks Volumes: The Story of Mary Joann Williamson

"Dear Diary..." Yeah, right. If only I had been so lucky! You know those amazing genealogy stories where someone discovers a trunk full of old letters in their grandmother's attic, or unearths a dusty diary that reveals family secrets? Well, this isn't one of those stories. In fact, my family's paper trail is about as sparse as a desert landscape.

My father was the first in generations to complete high school, and my brother and I blazed the trail to college. Our ancestors were pioneers and farmers who wielded plows more often than pens. While this meant fewer written records were passed down, it ironically sparked my passion for genealogy. Sometimes, the absence of stories makes us work harder to find them.

This brings me to my great-grandmother, Mary Joann Williamson, whose life I've reconstructed like an archaeologist carefully brushing away sand to reveal fragments of an ancient mosaic. I met her during a few childhood trips to Oklahoma, but I was too young to know to ask the questions that now keep me up at night. What was it like moving from Kentucky to Oklahoma Territory as a young girl? How did she feel when her mother, Helen Fannie Burnett, passed away when she was just 19?

Mary Joann was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on September 1, 1890. She spent her early years in the bluegrass state. Her family grew, with twin sisters Lottie and Lillie arriving in 1895 and brother Homer in 1900. By 1903, the family had made the bold move to Texas, where her brother Henry Roy was born.

The family's journey didn't stop there. They pushed on to Oklahoma, where tragedy struck in 1909 with the death of Mary's mother. But life, as it does, continued. In 1911, at age 20, she married Ewing Richard Woolsey, beginning a new chapter in her story. Their life together would span nearly five decades and bring both joy and heartache.

Their first child, born in 1912, didn't survive infancy – a heartbreaking reality of the era. But Mary persevered, going on to raise four children: Alton William (1913), Lillie May (1915), Geneva (1917), and Albert Lee (1921). Through the Dust Bowl years and beyond, Mary and Ewing built their life in Oklahoma, farming the land and raising their family.

Like an archaeological site waiting to be explored, Mary's life has revealed its secrets layer by layer. Each census record, marriage certificate, and newspaper clipping has been like a shard of pottery emerging from the earth, telling part of a larger story. The 1900 census shows her as a 9-year-old in Central City, Kentucky, a snapshot frozen in time. Her move to Oklahoma Territory becomes visible through property records and marriage documents, each one a tiny piece of evidence helping reconstruct the full picture of her journey.

Perhaps most fascinating was the careful excavation required to uncover her mother's identity. Helen Fannie Burnett was like a faint inscription that took years to decipher. Her presence in Mary's life was obscured by time until careful research brought her back into focus.

She lived to be 91, passing away in July 1981 in Elmore City, Oklahoma. Her life spanned from horse-and-buggy days to the space age, from coal oil lamps to color television. While I may not have her diary, I have something equally valuable: the drive to uncover and preserve her story for future generations.

Sometimes the best family histories aren't the ones we find in attics – they're the ones we piece together through determination, research, and love. After all, isn't that what genealogy is really about?