Tri-City Ledger -

A slender young man in dusty overalls walked across the plank sidewalk from the busy wooden structure in downtown Williams Station known as the Carney Commissary in the early 1890s and towards his room at the Magnolia Boarding House just across the tracks. Nicholas Ashley, the commissary clerk, had just handed the young man a letter from family in some distant county, as in the commissary served as the William's Station Post Office as well as a mercantile store for locals. The letter carried news of his mother's pending death and the uncertainty which awaited her as she sought the sweet ha...