Lizzie Mae Wilson
Lizzie Mae Wilson was born on 4 July 1907 at Doaksville, the old Choctaw Nation town beside Fort Towson, in what was still Indian Territory; Oklahoma became a state that November. Her parents were James Van Wilson and Rosie Ana Tims. She was named Me-lis-see Elizabeth Fibby Wilson. Her father called her Lizzie May, and when he wrote that name on legal papers instead of her given one, Lizzie May is what she legally became.
She grew up in a Choctaw home and did not know English until she was thirteen, when her father sent her to school at High Hill in Choctaw County. She said afterwards that learning English was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. In 1910 she was three, at home in Wilson Township, Choctaw County, with her parents and her brothers and sister Arthur, Candace, Islam and Daniel. Three of those children died young: Arthur in 1918, Candace in 1918, Daniel in 1919. Her mother died in 1924, when Lizzie was sixteen.
About 1926 she married Impson Mataha Thomas of Corinne, a full-blood Choctaw eight years older. They had ten children: Hazel Cora, Ruby Lizzie, Wrightsman Welch, Jimmy Ray, Gerald Don, McNew Islam, Lester Berry, Impson Jr., Clarence and A. J. The family farmed at Kiamichi in Pushmataha County. In February 1942 Impson gave her name on his draft card as the person who would always know his address. In April 1950 she was 43, at Kiamichi, with Impson and six sons at home. Impson died in 1959. She married again, to John Virgil David, who died in 1977.
She was a domestic employee for most of her working life. When she retired she became a volunteer Foster Grandmother at Jones Academy, the Choctaw Nation's boarding school at Hartshorne. She gardened, cooked, quilted, embroidered, did applique, coloured, played the organ, read the Bible and went to church singings. She was Assembly of God. Her favourite verse was Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding," and her favourite book of the Bible was Ruth.
She died on 25 March 2008 at Antlers, aged 100. Her funeral was at the Assembly of God church on 29 March 2008, with Rosie Baker, Raymond Humphrey and Andy Reed officiating and Edgar Taylor and Carl Hatcher singing Green Pastures and Go Rest High on That Mountain. Her grandsons and great-grandsons carried her: Jason Gay, David Hicks, Kyle Weathers, Bubba Thomas, Lyle Thomas and Zachary Smith. She was buried at Corinne Cemetery beside Impson. Seven of her children survived her: Ruby Harjo of Canyon Country, California, Hazel Wilson of Maywood, California, Wrightsman of Antlers, Gerald Don of Tulsa, McNew of Lane, Lester of Antlers and Impson Jr. of Oklahoma City, with twenty-two grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
Sources
If Lizzie Mae Wilson is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Lizzie Mae Wilson (1907-2008)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lizzie-mae-wilson-1907-2008-06da43.