Jennie Marie Collins Williams

Biography by her daughter, Marguerite

Jennie Marie was a brave, intelligent and stout hearted Christian who had a great sense of humor, took responsibility seriously.  Family and friends were her main interests and joy. She was really good at keeping up with both those segments of her life as well as having an avid interest in politics and current events.  She was the main source of knowledge of the Collins lines as well as the Williams.  Though we were able to tell her that we found her great grandmother Mercy Hutchinson and family listed in a book on a shelf in the Concord, New Hampshire State Library, we did not learn in time for her and her brothers to know that they descended from auspicious ancestors going back through English, Spanish and French royalty to the Norman Invasion, Magna Carta, Bosworth Field and Charlemagne.  From all those to being born in the small pioneer town of Johnson City in the Texas Hill Country seems quite remarkable.

She was born during the depression of 1893, and lived harshly through the Great Depression of the 1930's when her marriage was falling apart, living anxiously through World War I when her brother Harry fought in the  trenches, and later, not knowing where her son Waymon, Jr. was due to carefully kept military secrets during WWII.  Through all those events, she bore and brought up four children in frequently near primitive circumstances.

Jennie (Sis or Aunt Sis to most of her family) was the first of four children, born Thursday November 2nd, 1893 to Minnie Beulah Wallis and James Aaron Collins in Johnson City, Blanco County, Texas. Minnie was 23 years and James (Jim) was 32.  They were married on July 17, 1892.  Minnie and Jim owned their house in Johnson City.  His mother Mercy Hutchinson Jones Collins and his half brother Dexter Riley Jones lived with them.  His other half brother Henry and his wife Emma lived nearby.  His half sister Emma Isabel (Emma Belle) Jones Holcomb was mostly away with her husband John Holcomb, as she traveled and spoke on behalf of The Women's Temperance League.

Jennie said she was told that when a baby, she cried night and day with colic.  Falling out of bed and landing on her broken glass nursing bottle, she led two generations of Collins family members who experienced scars from lips being cut as children.  It became sort of a wry family joke.

Similar to the 1930's, because people were allowed to buy on credit too long in the panic of 1893, the drug store Jim ran went broke.  He then worked at the post office for a short time. Because of his fine hand writing, he was frequently asked to write legal documents.  When the family moved from Johnson City to Rockport when she was 1 to 1 1/2, she assumed they went by wagon. When they moved from Rockport to Beeville in 1895, she, mother and father went by train while Dexter drove the wagon and team carrying some of their belongings.

Jim worked as a carpenter, painter and paper hanger in Beeville and Pettus, work he did well the rest of his life.  From this we see from the time of Jennie's arrival in November of 1893 until Harry was born 14 October 1895 in Beeville, they had made two long distance moves.  While living in Beeville, Mother, Granny and Grandmother Mercy  watched from their front porch as two soldiers in army blue walked along the street, returning from the Spanish American War.

They had moved to Burnet by the time their other two sons were born—James Roy, September 19, 1900 and Samuel Wallis, June 15, 1906—where they lived until they moved to 338 Chicago Blvd. in San Antonio in 1913.

Jennie Marie, San Antonio 1913.

 Mother had a great memory and was a fine story teller who loved telling of their growing up in the country near Burnet, about personal encounters with wild cats, of her and her brothers swinging from heights on grape vines, and all sorts of adventures, one when Roy chased Harry under the house with scissors while their parents were away.  Mother and Harry often teased Roy to which he would turn his face toward the house and cry his loudest.  There was a time when Dexter or Henry avoided an encounter with desperados known to be in the area by hiding and listening to their horse hoofs approach and disappear. 

When she was nine and Harry was seven, her mother's friend Georgia Landrum, who became a life long family friend, taught them to read.  Mother loved learning. The family moved to Lampasas for a year so she could go to school and then back to Burnet where she attended a country elementary school that had three or four month terms.  In her early teens, she spent two school years with her Wallis grandparents in Johnson City. Behavior expectations were strict in that time, and by her grandfather being the County Judge, hers were especially so.

Then she moved back to Burnet where she attended and graduated from Robert E. Lee private high school.  From all this, it is easy to see her strong intent that we should graduate from high school, regardless of the difficulty caused by the depression and living in the country in the Oak Island area. During the two years we were out there, because of no transportation to a middle or high school, Ruth lived in town, first with Granny and Grand dad, with Aunt Katherine and Uncle Roy and then the Moore family.  More schooling was considered even better but all of us went to work and got further education as we could. 

Pat worked at Uncle Roy's gas station and drove a bus for The San Antonio Public Service Company before being drafted soon after the attack at Pearl Harbor. He served in the Corps of Engineers, first in Puerto Rico where his unit was to guard the Panama Canal from attack during the war in Europe. Then he was sent to Luzon in the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Harry Truman was our hero.

Granny had a heart problem from having rheumatic fever about the time Harry was born, but lived through all the moves and had the two more children.  There was an African American community called The Colony out from Blanco where they bought small pieces of land and farmed.  A woman from there called Aunt Harriett worked for Granny. Granny did the sewing for the family which was a large factor since much clothing, even underwear, was made at home.  Mother did some laundry and cooking. She became one of the best cooks ever.  One of the saddest times for Mother was when Granny died unexpectedly while taking an afternoon nap on February 19, 1932.  It was so sad for her when life was already so difficult.  When they lived in the house Grand dad built on Mebane Street, it was known that Granny's Bible reading time was at ten in the morning.  Though there were two rocking chairs on the front gallery, as Grand dad called it, she frequently sat on a bench built on the right end of it.  There was a swing on the other end with honeysuckle growing on latticework surrounding it where we spent many hours, some of them shelling peas or snapping beans for lunch. There we were able to watch hummingbirds build nests that were about the size of a walnut in the vines and then tend their young.

The Wallis grandparents came to live with them in 1910 in Burnet.  Grandmother died a few months later on December 16, 1910.  When the family moved to 338 Chicago Blvd in southeast San Antonio by Christmas in 1913, Grandpa liked the Wyatt family that rented the farm and lived with them, as he did not want to live in a city.  The farm was later sold and he moved with the Wyatt's to their new place where he lived out his life.

Grand dad worked with a furniture store in town repairing and refinishing, and Mother worked at the telephone company, then on Travis Street, followed in that space by Maverick Clarke. They rode street cars to and from work.  Harry worked for Alter's Drug Store at South Alamo and Garden Streets (now St. Mary's Street) until he went into the army. Roy also worked for a drug store on S. Alamo Street.  Sam was a school boy.

After mother met the Jones and Priest neighbor girls and they all went to McKinley Avenue Methodist Church., their Sunday School class went to the Medina River in the Oak Island area for a few days of camping.  On one of the days, while out on horseback, Waymon and his father came upon the campers. All were introduced.  The Jones girls knew them because their Uncle "Dude" Jones was married to Waymon's maternal Aunt Becky Putnam.  On that Sunday, all the Williams family and a Watson family, on whose place they were camping, joined them and had a big dinner together. Soon after that, Scott Williams took mother to the movie (silent) a couple of times.

The next spring, Etta, Mother thought perhaps at Scott's prompting, wrote and invited her to spend a week-end with the family at the farm off the Pleasanton Road.  She accepted and while there, Waymon asked her if he could come see her, to which she agreed.  At 6'2" tall, he was at that time called a well made man: handsome, dressed nicely, had charm and spoke with enthusiasm in a low tone of voice.  Her parents liked him. He was living alone at a place he and his father rented near town to which they rode from the farm on a horse or in a buggy.  Then they traveled into town by street car.  They had parlor dates, went to Sunday School and church, and occasionally went to a movie.  Though he enjoyed a joke, he was not much of a tease.  (Bernice and Pat were teasers; Ruth and Marguerite were not.) Jennie did not go out to the Williams house again until after they married.

They were married on Sunday, October 7, 1917 at McKinley Avenue Methodist Church at 2 PM, Reverend Beal officiating.  Her attendants were in fall colors:  Etta Williams in dark blue, Edna Jones in gray and Marguerite Jones in maroon.  Granny Collins made Jenny's navy blue dress, in what was known then as the war style.  She wore a navy blue hat.  At 5' 7" tall, she weighed 115 pounds, had brunette hair, pretty blue eyes and fair skin.  Harry Collins was best man.

Waymon Putnam Williams and Jennie Marie Collins wedding photo, 1917.

Grandma Williams, Lizzie and Scott were at the party at the Collins home for the wedding party.  When leaving, Grandma Williams told the newlyweds to be sure and be on time for dinner the next day.  It was remembered that Grandma Williams said that God must have had a grudge against her in giving her the two daughters in law; mother and Aunt Irene, Scott's wife.

They spent their wedding night at the Collins home, then stayed out at the Williams place until late October when they could have possession of the house they leased about a mile toward town on Pleasanton Road for which they bought furniture.  Though there was no church there, they went to Sunday School at nearby Cassin. 

Jennie went to her parent’s house a week or two before Ruth was born on July 31, 1918.  As with their other three children, Dr. J. H. Bigger delivered her.  Jenny and Ruth stayed in town with her parents.  Since it was expected that Waymon would be taken in the next increment of the draft, he pastured some of his cattle and sold the rest of the herd before joining Jennie and Ruth, staying until the next March when  Ruth was eight months old.

The war had ended and they bought the house at 609 San Francisco Street in the newly built neighborhood of Los Angeles Heights in the northwest part of San Antonio. Some years later, for that area to be part of Interstate I 10, that house was moved, and still may exist.  Bernice knew a girl in high school who lived in it, and she regretted that she did not go to see it.  They brought their furnishings to the new house and got settled. Pat was born January 25, 1920. Mother spoke of Marguerite, born May 8, 1926 and Bernice August 7, 1928 being her second family, also born at that house.

Like most in that time, Jennie washed clothes on Monday in the backyard using an iron pot over a fire for white things and galvanized tubs, one for scrubbing them on a scrub board, one for rinsing and one for starching.  After the dry things were taken from the rows of clothes lines, those to be ironed were sprinkled and wrapped tightly to be ironed on Tuesday.  Shirts, dresses and pillow cases stayed cleaner and fresher if starched.

From my early memory, Pat must have liked playing in the new house construction sites.  He came limping home one day reporting that he had stepped on a nail, to meet mother's obvious consternation since he would need a tetanus shot to which they had already learned he was wildly allergic. Also he and Ruth built a fire too close to the garage, burning it a bit before mother could put it out.  They enjoyed going to nearby Martinez Creek and bringing crawdads home in a pail, to be found disgustingly days later.

Also, it was when living there that Ruth and Pat were playing hide and seek from the banister of our front porch with neighbor friends.  At two years old, I was standing near when two cars were being raced on the street.   The driver of one lost control, swung into our yard, hitting and throwing me about fifteen feet into a bed of cannas before coming to a stop after knocking out a sizeable foundation corner post of the house.  His speedometer was jammed at 55 mph.  He thought about leaving the scene but dad arrived home at that time and strongly convinced him to wait for the police.  Mother had been sitting on the porch, walked down the steps and around the car. When not seeing me, she feared I was under it. When found, I was unconscious but soon came awake with nothing broken. Mr. Zoeller, who lived across the street, ran to the scene with a bucket of water.

Also at about that time, Pat shot a BB that hit me near the eye.  Because of the dark mark, mother thought it went into the eye.  Uncle Harry happened by at that time and saw that it only hit the eyelid.  When mother spoke to Pat about shooting toward someone, his reply was that he shot at my feet but I sat down.  Poor mother.

As houses were built around them, families moved in and some became friends for life. Waymon had joined McKinley Avenue Church, so upon moving they joined the new Los Angeles Heights Methodist Church.  They bought a used Chevrolet touring car in 1925. Street cars ran along San Francisco Street so they had convenient transportation.  Waymon, working with his dad as a farmer and cattle man all his life and having a short temper like his mother and sister Etta, he evidently did not make a good transition to the structure of city employment. Because of the unusual occasion of our driving down to the farm at night, it has been my impression it was the time of his father's unexpected death on October 9, 1930.

They lost their wonderful house in foreclosure in 1930, and moved to a rental on Santa Barbara Street, where in time, to mother's complete fright,  he disappeared for a few days before being met on a San Antonio Street, not recognizing Aunt Thelma's father, whom he knew well. After some time of hospitalization and back home, the family moved in the fall of 1931 to a new three room house with no conveniences, no running water, indoor plumbing and no telephone near Oak Island church and school where Pat went for 5th grade,  Marguerite was five and Bernice three. Dad had evidently brought his pastured herd there and was dairy farming, being very short of money for feed.  It was in that time of despair that Granny Collins died on February 19, 1932.

By September of 1932, we and the herd had moved to the awful house on the Taft ranch down the deep sand Applewhite Road from where Pat and I rode a mule five miles to and from the two room Oak Island School. Pat was in sixth grade and I started first grade. The mule was very skittish of the infrequent passing motor vehicles, and with ears moving like antennae, picking up the sound, would leave the sandy road, going through weeds and brush as near barbed wire fences as possible with us hanging on, fighting limbs and bending as flat as possible under low limbs.

There was a cranky kerosene kitchen stove, no hot or cold running water, and a four foot tall cream separator stood in the middle of the kitchen.  The separator had about 100 metal discs through which milk was processed to extract the cream from which butter was hand churned to sell for 19 cents a pound to five or six customers on 18 mile trips to San Antonio.  The discs had to be thoroughly washed in water heated on the stove.  Soapy water was created from bars, no flakes, granules or Dawn; the same thing for laundry all those early years.

Mother made wonderful biscuits.  At that house, she put them in an iron Dutch oven (a deep pan with a cover).  When she heard Dad turning the cows out to pasture from being milked in the morning, she placed the oven in the coals of the fireplace.  By the time he came to the house and washed up, the biscuits were golden, fluffy and ready for breakfast.  Pat and I took some with molasses or honey to school for lunch.

As I found myself in first grade in the two room Thelma School after Christmas, we and the herd had moved to the even worse house known as the Neal place, on corner land that was at the intersection of Rockport and Pleasanton Roads.  Being so poor, misery, tension and explosive anger were the atmosphere there.  I do not know how it was arranged that one day, Uncle Harry and Uncle Roy arrived. Whether it was planned or decided at the time, it became apparent that Mother and we children were going to leave.  Though Mother pled with thirteen year old Pat to go with us, he appeared determined to stay with dad, and did so.  We left with the few things we had and went to live with Grand dad who needed mother's care but did not want us to be there.

When taking notes from her over some years, I asked if she could tell of her time of most despair, she said it was at this time, when she was sick with suspected pernicious anemia and went to apply for a job to the WPA. She was hired earning $30.00 a month in a noisy factory sewing men's overalls on heavy duty machines.  Later she earned $35.00 a month canning horsemeat to be distributed to those on welfare and maybe army mess halls. After preparing breakfast and lunches for all, in order to save four cents a day, she walked four blocks to the city limits on South Presa Street to ride two buses to and from work. The fare was five cents to ride within the city limits with a free transfer if the destination required riding another bus.  One could buy a nickel pass of six tickets for 25 cents; a good deal which gave her three round trips.

When on Mebane Street, she washed and ironed on Saturday and Sunday, always having a good Sunday dinner for us after we went to Sunday School and church. She then often walked a mile and a half in the evening to attend a church service.  Like most women at that time, she never drove a car so all her travels were with family, friends, on buses or by walking.

When Grand dad became an invalid sometime after having a botched prostate surgery, her brothers paid her $25.00 a month to stay home with him.  After we moved to Hermitage Court in early 1938, Grand dad died on November 5, 1938.  She went to work teaching at the Southton Boys School that was near Brooks Air Field, where she loved working with those children in trouble. After that, she worked in the office of the big welfare housing community of Alazan Court in southeast downtown San Antonio.

During WWII, when we lived on Adams Street and then on Olmos Drive, she worked at the San Antonio Arsenal, where she marveled and was quizzical about working with key-punch cards, the primitive beginnings of computers.

When she arrived at home, worrisomely for us, later than the usual time one afternoon, her arm was in a sling.  She told that it was broken when she fell on stairs at work.  She walked to a bus stop, got to Robert B. Green Charity Hospital, had it set, rode buses to our corner and walked the two and a half blocks to home.  Spencer did not swear in our company but after listening to her, he said, "Well I'll be damned."  All of us were at work.  Personal calls were not made or taken at work.  I doubt that any of us knew numbers where each worked.

Even if it was just up to the Hill Country with her brothers and their wives, she loved to travel.  Though I know she, dad, Ruth and Pat went to Sinton to see Aunt Georgie and Uncle Cooper Morrow one time, to my knowledge, she never went to the Texas coast.  She spent about four months with us when Blackie was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, and loved going to see Bernice, Kinney and family when they were stationed at Dayton, Ohio.

She had a very pretty voice, and would sing wonderful semi classical songs while in a rocking chair on the front porch or in the living room.  The last time I was with her in the nursing home, she recited the words of some hymns as well as some Shakespeare.  She was an avid and fast reader; reading being one of the joys and comforts of her life. Losing the sight of one eye from an infection while in the hospital after cataract surgery was such a devastating blow. She kept reading with the awful, thick glasses that were all that was available before implants were invented.  She read through her well worn Bible many times, taught adult Sunday School and volunteered in the office of her church.

Like most in her time, before antibiotics, she was a good and caring home doctor.  She rubbed our chests with Vicks, swabbed our sore throats with mercury chrome and gave us an aspirin dissolved in a teaspoon of water.  Good homemade tomato soup was the get well food.  One time when we had baby chickens that looked droopy, she sent me to the drug store to get permanganate of potash, a powder that she put in their water.  They perked up and lived.

The early deaths of Spencer and her brother Sam were shocking markers for all our family.

She took care of Spencer T. and Suzanne and the home while Ruth worked full time and went to college to get her teaching degree.  When she moved to an apartment when Ruth and Craig Marshall married in 1962, being distressed she had to be away from them, she had to live close enough to frequently see Spencer T. and Suzanne. 

After Spencer T and Suzanne were in college, Bernice and Kinney helped her move to a nice San Antonio Housing Authority apartment on Josephine Street where she lived until after she had a stroke.  When dismissed from the hospital she was taken to Chandler House, a Methodist Nursing Facility where she lived for about a year before she died peacefully, surrounded by family in the Nix Hospital at about 8 PM on Sunday June 28, 1981. Arriving from Virginia, Marguerite and Blackie landed at the San Antonio air port about that same time.

Her memorial service and burial were held at Sunset Memorial Park, where she is buried near Pat, Frances and Spencer in the Masonic Section.  The scriptures at her service were Isaiah 40:31:  “But they that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”  Because of her love of the Texas hills, Proverbs 121: 1 was read:  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.”

She was a wise counselor, a valiant tiger of a mother, ever dignified and watchful of her children and  family, nudging each along according to its capabilities, her hopes and expectations; the best of the best.

Written lovingly by Marguerite Williams Blackwelder, August 2013