Elsie M. Wilson Samuels

Elsie M. Wilson Samuels presents to the researcher some challenges and an example of when primary sources don’t always agree on details. The gravestone gives her birth date as 21 May 1893. Her death certificate reads 11 November 1892, and the 1900 census says her birth should have been in November of 1889. We will probably never know the truth.

            Whatever the case, Elsie first appears on the 1900 census with her family in Marlin, Falls County, Texas. Her parents were John and Rogena (death certificate reads Georgena) Gibson. Other family included John H. (born Dec. 1891), Ginley L. (Aug. 1894), Early M. (March 1897), and Willie A. (Jan. 1876 – a niece). John and his parents were born in Alabama; Georgena was born in Texas, while her parents were both from Alabama. John supported his family while working as a janitor at a nearby school, and his wife took in laundry.

             By the 1910 census, still in Marlin, Georgena had passed, and John had married Mary. On 15 December 1908 Elcie [sic] married Tom Wilson in Falls County, and they were living with her parents in 1910. The couple has not been found in the 1920 census. At some point between 1910 and 1930 Tom Wilson died and Elsie married Aaron Samuels. The 1930 census shows Elsie as a widow again, but then in San Antonio as a lodger at 511 Iowa. She was a servant for a private family.

             San Antonio city directories place Elsie at 515 Iowa (1931-1932) and 713 Indiana (1934-1935). These are the only two directories in which she appears.

            Her 1935 death certificate says she was living at 712 Indiana, probably as a lodger with Bonita Campbell, the informant on the death certificate. Elsie was working as a domestic cook when she died of stomach cancer and anemia at the age of 42. The Washington Funeral Home at 401 North Centre handled the burial on 18 July 1935 in City Cemetery No. 3, section D, lot N1/2-9, grave 3.

Apparently without relatives or friends able to afford a proper gravestone, this simple cement marker with her name and dates were scratched into it.