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Cissie Ligon's wedding at the Little Church Around the Corner

The University of Texas’s 1939 yearbook names Natalee Ligon as "Cissie." She appears in a campus photograph, among the Bluebonnet Belle nominees and on a "Good Fellows" page.

Natalee Cissie Ligon (Chambliss) Clarkson
Natalee Cissie Ligon (Chambliss) Clarkson
Source: owner upload
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Tulsa to Austin

The 1920 Tulsa census lists an infant Cissie in the household of Nat E. and Zula Ligon, with an older sister, Marjorie. In 1930, ten-year-old Natalee appears with Zula Lee in a household using the surname Moss. The entries describe the households without independently resolving biological parentage. Wedding coverage describes her move from Tulsa's Monte Cassino high school to the University of Texas in Austin. It credits her with Kappa Alpha Theta, an honorary group called Ownooch, and membership in the Girls' Cotillion club. One clipping calls her a graduate, though no record yet fixes the year or the degree. The 1940 census, taken when she was twenty and still at her mother's Austin address, counted three finished years of college and listed her occupation simply as housework.

1920 U.S. census, Tulsa, Oklahoma, ED 231, sheet 3B, lines 52-55: Nat E. and Zula Ligon with Marjorie L. and infant Cissie, enumerated 15 January 1920.
1920 U.S. census, Tulsa, Oklahoma, ED 231, sheet 3B, lines 52-55: Nat E. and Zula Ligon with Marjorie L. and infant Cissie, enumerated 15 January 1920. 15 January 1920 · ED 231, sheet 3B, lines 52-55
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1920 census (NARA T625), via Ancestry.
How it is shown: Complete page as supplied; no crop, no retouch, no search highlight.
Keep in mind: Likely identification of the infant Cissie as Natalee Cissie Ligon, on names, places, ages and her mother; household naming is not a canonical parentage decision.
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New York, wartime

Cissie married in New York during the war. On 9 October 1943, at the Little Church Around the Corner, she became the wife of Lieutenant (junior grade) Herbert Kelso Clarkson. Back home, the Tulsa paper ran the details: a rose-and-silver lamé dress, a matching hat, brown butterfly orchids for a corsage, and a single attendant, her sister, printed in the notice as Mrs. Roy Berry Jr. Both families gathered afterward at the Astor Hotel, and the newlyweds planned to stay in New York for as long as Herbert's posting there lasted. An Austin paper had already covered the send-off a week earlier, naming Cissie, her mother, Herbert's mother, and a Mrs. Roy Beery among the party leaving for New York.

San Antonio

Seven years on, the 1950 census places the family in San Antonio: Herbert, Cissie, and a young daughter recorded as Margery, with Cissie again down as keeping house. A San Antonio directory from the following year lists "Natalee C" at that same address, next to Herbert's name.

The Chambliss obituary

The Victoria Advocate obituary of June 10, 1984 for Cissie L. Chambliss is hers. It describes a Port O'Connor resident, gives her birth date as August 19, 1919, and names her husband Edgar Raye Chambliss, three children, including Margery Oak, and sister Margery Berry. It announced a memorial at Port O'Connor Baptist Church.

State records agree. The Texas marriage index records the marriage of Cissie L. Ligon, 56, and Edgar R. Chambliss at Galveston on August 19, 1975. The Texas death index records the death of Cissie L. Chambliss in Calhoun County on June 8, 1984, and the Social Security Death Index gives her birth as August 19, 1919.

Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), Sunday 10 June 1984, p. 16 (Obituary Index entry, Natalee Cissie Ligon [Chambliss] Clarkson, with Margery named). Full newspaper page as saved.
Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), Sunday 10 June 1984, p. 16 (Obituary Index entry, Natalee Cissie Ligon [Chambliss] Clarkson, with Margery named). Full newspaper page as saved. 10 Jun 1984 · p. 16
Source: Victoria Advocate, via Newspapers.com (image 439539070); index record: Ancestry.
How it is shown: Complete newspaper page; no crop, no retouch, no search highlight.
Keep in mind: The Newspapers.com index places the item on this page; that has not been checked against the article text.
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About the evidence

The yearbook, censuses, directory and wedding notices establish the earlier account. The Texas marriage and death indexes confirm the Chambliss identification and date that marriage to 1975; no record found explains the end of the Clarkson marriage. Cissie's biography adds the later San Antonio and Houston directory entries and the earlier June 1984 death notice.

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