Headstone of Will E. and Clara Williams. Born in 1876, Will was the oldest son of Ransom and Sarah Williams, and he married Clara Franklin in 1901. The couple lived for many years near Clara’s family in the small community of Creedmoor in southern Travis County, but they eventually moved to east Austin and lived in a house on East 19th Street, now Martin Luther King Blvd. Will and Clara had eight children. One of their boys, Arnold, eventually married Novella Harris, and the couple settled in the house next door where they raised five children of their own. As part of the oral history research on the Williams farmstead, we interviewed three of Arnold and Novella’s daughters, who are great granddaughters of Ransom and Sarah Williams—Corrine Harris, Lourice Johnson, and Jewel Andrews. They all had fond memories of Will and Clara, and they recalled the many farm animals that their grandparents kept. Apparently, Will and Clara brought a little of the farm life to the city when they came to Austin. Will died in 1954 at the age of 78, and Clara Williams died in 1977 at the age of 103. They are buried next to each other in the Evergreen Cemetery in east Austin, less than half-a-mile from the house where they lived on East 19th Street.
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