William Riley Newsom
William Riley Newsom, who went by Riley, was born on 10 November 1859 in West Tennessee. His parents were Hamp F. Newsom and his wife Nancy, both natives of North Carolina. In June 1880 Riley, 20, was farming with his father in the 12th civil district of Henderson County, Tennessee, and his sisters Sarah C., 18, and Nancy Ann, 16, kept house at home. Fifty-eight years later his son gave Hamp Newsom as Riley's father for his death certificate, though by then the family no longer knew his mother's name.
Riley married Nancy O. Richardson, a Chester County girl, about 1883. In June 1900 they were farming their own land, free of mortgage, in the second civil district of Chester County, Tennessee. Riley was 41 and Nancy 39; they had been married seventeen years, and seven of her nine children were living. At home were Ambres B., 16, Elbert, 14, Alice C., 10, Joel, 8, Della A., 5, Cora B., 3, and the baby, Lee S., born in May 1899. Riley could read and write. In February 1894 he had sat on a Chester County circuit court jury.
Soon after 1900 the family moved to West Texas. Riley's sister, Mrs. J. M. Johnston, had come to Taylor County in 1896. Nancy died in Jones County in January 1906, aged 44, leaving the youngest children motherless; Lee was six. In April 1910 Riley was a widower of 50 on his own farm in Justice Precinct 5 of Jones County, with Alice, 20, Joel, 18, Della, 15, Cora, 13, and Lee, 10. Joel, Della and Cora worked the home farm. His married son Elbert lived two houses away with his wife Lizzie.
Riley farmed for forty years and quit in 1919. He lived on at Hamlin, on the Jones and Fisher County line, for almost twenty years more. In August 1938 he went into Baylor Hospital at Dallas for an operation on 6 August. He died there of septicemia on 24 August 1938, aged 78. His son W. E. Newsom of Hamlin gave the particulars. He was buried beside Nancy in McCaulley Cemetery in Fisher County, under a granite stone headed NEWSOM, with "Mother" and "Father" on its two panels and the line "Resting until the morning of the resurrection."
Parents
Hamp F. Newsom (b. 1831)
Nancy Newsom (b. 1832)
Children
Sources
If William Riley Newsom is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "William Riley Newsom (1859-1938)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-riley-newsom-1859-1938-18996a.