In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would present one of the Williams/Bishop family's recent connections to Ireland. Given some of our DNA test results, I'm sure we have plenty of connections, but this is just one of them.
The Irish ancestor we'll discuss today is a gentleman by the name of Peter Wilson (1783–1856). More on him later. But first, we must travel back to where it all began, in Wilburton, Oklahoma.
George, Cledah, and Norma Dean Williams were born to Alvin "Homer" Jacob Williams (1890–1987) and his wife, Lulie "Sula" Brown (1899–1986) in Latimer County, Oklahoma. Our Irish connection to Philip Wilson runs through their mother, Sula Brown.
According to one user on Ancestry.com, the following photograph shows Alvin Williams, Sula Brown Williams, and George "Snap" Williams as a child:
Here's another version zoomed in closer so you can get a better look at their faces:
As for this picture's accuracy, I have no idea whether it is true or not. But the fact that the user specifically identified each person leads me to believe it is probably accurate.
Sula Brown and her siblings, Edgar E. Brown (1901–1993), Edith Brown (1903–1915), and Adus Brown (1904–1984), were born to Sarah Adeline WILSON Brown and a mysterious figure by the name of "George J Brown." These are George, Cledah, and Norma Dean Williams' grandparents. Here is a picture of Sarah Adeline Wilson in her later years:
Virtually all we know about George J Brown is that he is listed on the 1894 marriage license with Sarah Adeline Wilson as "G. J. Brown."
It appears his name may have been George, he probably lived from 1870–1905, and he may be buried in Baldwin Cemetery near Red Oak, Oklahoma. However, no one has been able to determine who he is or where he comes from. Even his children list their father's place of birth as several different states on their census records over the years, before apparently giving up and just listing "United States of America" as his birthplace in the 1940 census.
There is some evidence that George may have been Native American. There are several George Browns listed in the Dawes Rolls with birth dates resembling George's, but I haven't found a way to determine whether any of these is the same George Brown. This is a work in progress.
I did find one picture, however, that may show our mysterious Mr. Brown. According to one user on Ancestry.com, the following picture is a photograph of Sula Brown as a child.
To help us see the picture a little better, here it is zoomed in:
There is one thing that strikes me as odd about this photograph. At first, I thought this must be Sula, one of Sula's sisters, and her brother Edgar. Given the girls' young age, if this is indeed Sula, then this would have been taken while George Brown was still alive, and so the man in the photograph might be him. Sula Brown would have been around 6 years old when her father died.
Following George Brown's death in 1905, Sarah Adeline Wilson quickly remarried James Terman Rogers of Oklahoma City in 1906, with whom she had several additional children. It is from this Wilson line that we connect to Philip Wilson of Ireland. It is also through this same marriage between Sarah Adeline Wilson and James Rogers that we have many distant cousins in Oklahoma through the Rogers, Swan, and other related families. Sarah Adeline and George J Brown's children, including Sula, were raised as step-children in the household of James Terman Rogers, as shown in the 1910 census:
Sarah Adeline Wilson and her family traveled by station wagon from Alabama to Indian Territory sometime around 1890, perhaps stopping in Missouri for a few years along the way. I connected with one distant cousin who told me that she still remembers stories of our family's journey to Oklahoma, specifically recalling that several chairs fell out of their station wagon along the way. It must have been a bumpy ride. Sarah Adeline had several siblings who married into other Oklahoma families, including Mary Jane Wilson, who married into the family of William John Swan, and Buelah May Wilson, who married into the family of Giles Stuart Burdett.
These siblings' father was William Harvey Wilson (1852–1892), who married Nancy Jane Traylor (1861–1943). William Harvey's father was Peter Wilson, who was born in Chester, South Carolina in 1827, and died in St. Louis, Missouri in 1865. It appears Peter died serving in the Civil War, though there is conflicting information as to which side he fought for. I can find Civil War records with his information from both the Union and the Confederacy, and I've yet to resolve the conflicting information.
Peter's father was also named Peter Wilson, and he was born in Ireland around 1783. In 1809, Peter sailed across the Atlantic to immigrate to America, ultimately arriving in South Carolina, as shown in multiple immigration records:
We can also find Peter's birth place listed as Ireland in several census records, such as the following screenshot of the 1850 census, where Peter is described as a farmer from Ireland:
Peter's son, Thomas Wilson, also lists Peter's place of birth as Ireland in Thomas's own passport application.
And so, our lineage dating back to this special Irish immigrant is as follows:
I don't know much about Peter's life in Ireland yet, but I think that's enough for one St. Patrick's Day!
