Waymon Putnam Williams

 

Waymon Putnam Williams Sr.

l to r: brothers Scott and Waymon Putnam Williams.

WAYMON PUTNAM WILLIAMS

bio by his daughter, Marguerite Williams Blackwelder

Waymon was born to Henry Clinton Williams and Angeline Frances Putman on February 26, 1893 at the Medina River place or the Pleasanton Road property. He was named for his uncle Wayman (with an "a") who fought in the Civil War, and died soon after, as a young man. The name has been carried down to the fourth Waymon Putnam Williams.

Wayman Williams, Born May 27, 1845, Died June 14, 1867, Aged 22 years & 18 d's.

He worked with his father until he was scheduled to be in the next draft during World War I, which ended before he was called.

Through mutual friends, he met and married Jennie Marie Collins on October 7, 1917 in San Antonio, where they lived until late summer of 1931 in the Los Angeles Heights area. They had four children: Virginia Ruth (Yantis), Waymon Putnam, Jr. (who was know as Doy in the Oak Island community), Marguerite Elizabeth Blackwelder, and Bernice Norris (Kinney).

When his work was ended with The Railway Express Company during the Depression, he went back to dairy farming when the family moved to Oak Island to a house on the Hummel place, about a half mile west of Oak Island Church and school for a year. After that, they moved to the Taft Ranch, way south off the Applewhite Road, where they lived for a short time before moving to a house on the Neil property near Neil and Pleasanton roads. 

He was well known as a good trainer of horses to saddle.  He enjoyed hunting and fishing, and was a good swimmer.  One night, while fishing with friends, in preparation for a big community fish fry on the Medina, he hooked a huge cat fish, hiding under an outcropping of rocky bank.  He eventually got in the water and wrestled it out with another man or two keeping the line taut. It is easy for me to remember as it was noted that it weighed forty-two pounds, one pound more than Bernice, who was six years old.

It was from the Neil Road place that Jennie Marie took the girls, and moved to San Antonio to live with her recently widowed and frail father.  To her worry and sorrow but understanding, Waymon, Jr. at 13 years, out of loyalty, chose to stay with his father. Waymon, Jr. and Marguerite attended Oak Island and Thelma schools, and the family attended Oak Island Methodist Church during those years. With middle and high schools too distant, and no transportation, Ruth lived with relatives and friends and went to schools in San Antonio during those years.

Those are the years of the life of my father with which I am familiar.  I do not know if he chewed tobacco when we lived in town, but know he did the years we lived in the country.  He and Waymon Jr. continued to live and farm in the area, and after he procured a pick up truck, he had a business of collecting milk from various farms and taking it to the Knowlton Creamery on Fredericksburg Road.  He came to see us occasionally, and Bernice and I spent a week with him during a couple of summers. (It was one of those summers, when visiting the Ralph Watson’s down the road that I saw and heard my first phonograph player.  They probably had numerous records but the one that amazed me was the one that played what seemed a child’s record, The Little Rock Candy Mountain.)

After about ten years after separating, Waymon and Jennie Marie divorced, and he married Mollie Schmidt. They bought and farmed land at Cibolo, where he died at home of a sudden heart attack on September 29, 1959. He is buried in Coker Cemetery, San Antonio.

He left numerous descendants, some of whom, with cousins have enjoyed researching their genealogies, and get together as often as possible.

By Marguerite E. Williams Blackwelder    August 2009

Waymon Putnam Williams at a birthday party