Ancestors

Silas Willis Risley

Silas Willis Risley was born on 25 October 1887 at Dugginsville, a crossroads settlement in Ozark County, Missouri, near the Arkansas line. He carried his father's first name, Silas, but went by his middle name all his life. The census takers of Oklahoma wrote him down as Willis Risley, his children's school papers called him Willis, and his gravestone reads W. S. Risley.

He married Alice Gertrude Henson, who was born on New Year's Day 1890. In 1910 the couple were living at Big Creek in Taney County, one county west of Ozark: Silas W. Risley, 22, his wife Allie, 19, and a baby daughter, Ramey. Both his parents had been born in Missouri. More children followed in the Missouri Ozarks, among them Clifton Willis, born in June 1913 at Forsyth, the seat of Taney County.

When the United States entered the First World War, every man between 21 and 30 had to register for the draft. Willis registered in Ozark County, giving his birth as 25 October 1887 at Dugginsville.

About 1920 the family crossed into Oklahoma. Their daughter Reta was born in Missouri about 1920 and Jewel in Oklahoma about 1921. In 1930 they were living in Moore Township, Muskogee County: Silas, 43, Allie, 40, Clifton, 15, Orgie, 13, Reta, 10, Jewel, 9, and Juanita, 5. By 1932 they had settled near Cookson, in the hills of southern Cherokee County, close to the Illinois River. Their youngest child, Aquila Cornelious, was born there on 4 October 1932, when Willis was 44 and Alice 42. Aquila went to school at Cookson through the 1940s, and the school's enrollment papers named Willis Risley as his father.

In 1942, at 54, Willis registered again in the draft that took the names of older men, at Cookson, working for himself. In April 1950 the census found Willis and Alice still at Cookson, with Aquila, then 17, the last child at home. Willis, 62, was farming. Willis died later that year. He was buried at Box Cemetery near Vian, in Sequoyah County, under a granite marker carved with two clasped hands and the word "Father". Alice lived another sixteen years and was buried near him.

Several of the children went west to the San Joaquin Valley of California, the farm country around Modesto. On Saturday, 16 April 1949, the day before Easter, Willis and Alice's son Orgie was driving his wife Thelma, her two sisters and a baby niece on Highway 99 near Ceres when a front tire blew out. The car rolled and burned. Orgie was pulled out alive but died of his burns the next day, and the five were buried side by side at Turlock in five identical white coffins.

The children of Willis and Alice, as their memorials and the published reading of Box Cemetery list them, were Ramie, who married a Davenport; Wintferd Taft; Clifton Willis, known as Cliff; Orgie; Loretta, known as Rett, who married a Ray; Jewel, who married a Rannells; and Aquila. The cemetery book also names a daughter Juanita, wife of a Taylor, and a son known as R. G.

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Cite: Heirology, "Silas Willis Risley (1887-1950)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/silas-willis-risley-1887-1950-148447.