Williams and Allied Families, by Katie Maud Seale Ellis
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Williams and Allied Families, by Katie Maud Seale Ellis | ||||||
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Privately published in 1973—and commonly referred to by family researchers as "the Blue Book" because of its azure-blue cover—Williams and Allied Families is the seminal, genealogical work on this Williams line that begins in the 1790s with at least four brothers born in the Carolinas: Elijah, William R., Ezekiel, and George W. As 2005 comes to a close, we still do not know the parents of these men, but active research continues.
Katie Maud Seale Ellis was born in 1894 to Alford Louis Seale and Jemima Cassandra Williams. Jemima was a daughter of Nathaniel Williams, a son of Ezekiel. Katie began actively researching her lines in the 1920s. "The Blue Book" represents at least three decades of her research and effort. Not afforded the luxuries we have today of high-tech genealogical research and collaboration, Katie gathered her information from family bibles, from county documents, from manual, county-by-county searches through the available federal census materials, and from years of diligent mailings to and from known descendants. The typed pages of the book were bound in 1973 and offered for sale for $10 to family members. The book has been otherwise unavailable for over two decades.
In addition to Williams and Seale, other surnames that make significant appearances in the book include: Castle, Cottingham, Cross, Ellis, Harris, Holland, Hopkins, Hutchison, Lott, Pearson, Pollard, and Smith.
Through the Internet and RelatedLines.com, we have come to encounter more and more descendants of these families, many of whom have no access to this original work. Thanks to the generosity and trust of Lloyd W. Smith Jr., another descendant of Ezekiel Williams, we were able to obtain a copy of "The Blue Book" in good condition. In order to prevent damage to this irreplaceable copy, the decision was made to photograph each page rather than risk attempts at scanning or copying.
The result is an exact reproduction of each page of the book, with nothing omitted. Every page is presented as a single graphic image that can be read online, printed, or downloaded. Once displayed, the navigation bar above each image includes a "Printable Image" option. This will load the image into a new window of your Web browser—without navigation buttons—from which you can select File, Print from your Web browser, or right-click the image and choose to save it to your own computer. If the "Printable Image" option is grayed out on a page, as it is on this one, it means your are not viewing a photographed image of an original page, and you can print the display directly without loading a new window.
While care has been taken to reproduce exactly what was on each page of the book, the quality of the original, the photographic method chosen, and the necessity of keeping the resultant images as small as possible for use over the Internet means the images are not as perfect as we would like. If viewed at full size, the images will be legible, and they will print well on standard, letter-sized paper.
Like all works of genealogical research, the information never remains static. Research during the three decades since the book was written has added new data about the families described, and has uncovered errors or inconsistencies in some of the book's information. We have opened a Topic in the RelatedLines.com Forums for the purpose of allowing contributors a place to discuss these additions and errata. At present, there is no formal errata posted for the book, but one may be compiled in the future.
Catherine (Katie) Maud Seale Ellis (Mrs. R. P. Ellis) was born July 31, 1894, near Kilmichael, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She graduated in the School of Arts from Grenada College, Grenada, Mississippi, in 1913. She married Robert Pearson Ellis in 1914 in West Point, Mississippi. They moved to Holmes County, Mississippi, in 1922, settling in the Franklin community. They remained in Holmes County until their deaths, his in 1957, and hers December 6, 1982.
They had four sons: Robert Pearson Ellis, Jr.; Alfred Clayton Ellis; David Wilson Ellis; and Edwin Seale Ellis. Robert, Jr. and David served in WWII, and Edwin served in the Korean conflict. Edwin died in an accident on a training mission while on active duty in 1954.
Since her husband and four sons had all attended what is now Mississippi State University, she was made an honorary alumna of that institution at the time of her husband's death.
She took an active interest in state and national politics. Near the end of her life, she was a member of the United States Senatorial Club, a sustaining member of the National Senatorial Committee, a member of the Americans Against Union Control of Government, The National Congressional Club, and a member of the Republican Presidential Task Force.
She was a member of, and actively participated in, the National Association of the Daughters of the American Revolution, serving two terms as Regent of the Benjamin G. Humphrey Chapter of that organization, and attended state and national meetings. She also belonged to the John Pulliam Chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames of the XVII Century in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Although originally a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, she became a member and loyal supporter of the now United Methodist Church in Lexington after moving to Holmes County.
In addition to her three sons, she was survived by five grandsons, three granddaughters, two great-grandsons, and six great-granddaughters.
She was interred beside her husband and near her son on December 9, 1982, in the 1946 addition to the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Lexington, Mississippi. The Reverend Leslie Nabors, Pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Clarksdale, Mississippi, presided.
(Extracted by C. Gordon Smith from the obituary and epitaphs for Katie Maud Seale Ellis.)