Wilma Charlotte Coleman
Wilma Charlotte Coleman was born on 3 September 1926 at Oklahoma City, the first child of Dewey Coleman, a Georgia-born veteran of the First World War, and Frieda Wilhelmina Charlotte Snook, who was eighteen and from Topeka, Kansas. By 1928 the family was back in Topeka, where her brother John Harland was born that July, and in 1930 the four of them were living in the house of Frieda's parents, Harland and Rosa Snook, on the census taker's rounds of the city. Dewey had his own household in Topeka Township by 1940, with Wilma, thirteen, and John, eleven.
She married Odell Ambeus Stilley, a North Carolina corporal nine years older than she was, and went east with him to Clemmons, outside Winston-Salem, where his family farmed. Their son Raymond Odell was born in February 1947 and a daughter Carol Jean followed. The family lived on Route 2 at Clemmons and later at 362 Hampton Road, and she was a member of the Muddy Creek Church of Christ there. In August 1966 she signed as a witness at Raymond's wedding to Wilma Sarah Hudson. When Odell died at home in February 1992 she gave the information for his death certificate.
In her widowhood she moved across the state to Washington, in Beaufort County, where her granddaughter Donna Williams lived, and joined the Beaver Dam Church of Christ. She died at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville on Tuesday 6 August 2013, aged eighty-six, three weeks after her brother John died in Kansas. Tony Krantz conducted her funeral at Beaver Dam Church of Christ on the Saturday and she was buried at Oakdale Cemetery in Washington under a grey stone that reads "Wilma Coleman Stilley, beloved mother and grandmother." Her obituary named her daughter Carol Michael of Front Royal, Virginia, her son Raymond and his wife Wilma of Winston-Salem, three grandchildren, six great-grandchildren including a sailor, CTT3 Ryan Strader of the Navy, and a niece, Sylvia Coleman Owen.
Children
Sources
Obituary of Mrs. Wilma Charlotte Coleman Stilley, Winston-Salem Journal, August 2013
Proves: Names among her survivors 'one son, Raymond Stilley and wife Wilma of Winston Salem' and a grandchild 'Misty Avery and husband Ernie of Clemmons', placing Raymond Stilley of Winston-Salem as her son.
Wilma Charlotte Coleman Stilley (3 Sep 1926 - 6 Aug 2013), Oakdale Cemetery, Washington, Beaufort County, North Carolina, Find a Grave memorial 115159606
Proves: Gives her birth in Oklahoma City and death in Greenville, North Carolina; lists her parents Dewey Coleman and Frieda Snook Dunham, her husband Odell Ambers Stilley, and her children Carol Michael and Raymond Stilley of Winston-Salem.
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Researched October 2026. Cite: Heirology, "Wilma Charlotte Coleman (1926-2013)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/wilma-charlotte-coleman-1926-2013-96d8de.