♀Lenora May Tate

Lenora May Tate (12 December 1896 – 1 June 1969) was the wife of Clarence Edward Koons and the mother of nine children, raised between Clay County, Illinois, and western Oklahoma. By her marriage she was the aunt of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), whose mother, Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977), was Clarence’s elder sister.

Life

Lenora was born on 12 December 1896. No record gives her birthplace. A memorial compilation names her parents as Charles Judson Tate and Martha Alice Kinnaman; that link rests on the compilation alone.

She married Clarence Edward Koons in 1915, and their first child, a daughter, was born that November at Flora, in Clay County. The couple then moved to Oklahoma, where his parents had settled, and the next five children were born there between 1917 and 1925, at Southard and O’Keene in Blaine County and at Homestead. By 1927 the family was back at Flora, where another son was born that year. Two more sons, Orvil and Robert, are known only from their brothers’ obituaries. One of the sons, born at O’Keene in 1918, was named Bernice; his obituary confirms that he was a son.

Death

Lenora May Tate Koons died on 1 June 1969, and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery at Xenia, in Clay County, where Clarence was laid beside her in 1975. No record gives the place of her death.