Margery Clarkson MacKinnon: from Texas to New Hampshire

Margery Lee Clarkson was born in Texas, worked as a civil draftsman in Houston, and raised six children across three marriages, most of them in New Hampshire. She lived with serious mental illness for much of her life. Her family remembers her for her cooking, her careful Christmases, and the years she spent caring for her youngest son.

Austin and San Antonio

Margery was born in Austin on Wednesday, October 24, 1945, at 1:20 p.m. at Seton Hospital. Her father, Lt. Herbert Clarkson, was on terminal leave from the Navy that month; before the service he had practiced law in San Antonio. Her mother was the former Miss Cissie Ligon.

The family was in San Antonio by the following spring, when Margery was baptized at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in April 1946. She was still there four years later: the 1950 census finds her, age four, living with her parents in Bexar County.

University, work and Texas roots

Margery's obituary says she went on to the University of Texas and belonged to Kappa Alpha Theta, continuing what the family remembers as a sorority tradition, and that she later worked as a civil draftsman for several companies in Houston. The same obituary calls her a descendant of the Old Three Hundred, the first Anglo-American settler families of Stephen F. Austin's colony, and says she kept her "strong Texas roots" close all her life through an interest in genealogy.

Evidence note: Likely. University, sorority and work come from her obituary only. The Old Three Hundred descent is the obituary's claim and has not been checked against the colony's land records.

Three marriages, six children

Margery married three times. The first, to Rellim James Miller Jr., came in December 1966 in Texas; records show they divorced in February 1977. They had two children together, a son, Rellim James "Jimmy" Miller III, born in 1972, and a daughter. Jimmy died in October 2003, at 31.

Her second marriage, on May 20, 1981, was to Richard Dixon Oak Sr., in San Saba County. Richard already had an older son, who became Margery's stepson. Together they had three more: Travis Raye Oak, born in 1982, her son Michael Oak, born in 1984, and David Clarkson Oak, born in Houston in 1988.

New Hampshire, and a hard year in Texas

By the family's account, Margery and Richard owned their first house, on Rowan in Houston, for several years, and later rented in Leander, northwest of Austin. Her obituary says she "remarried and moved to NH in 1986." The move fits the family's baby book; the remarriage came later. The baby book kept for her son born in 1984 notes on his third birthday, in July 1987, "We are in New Hampshire now," celebrated at a friend's barbecue with Mom, Dad and his brothers.

In 1988, while she was pregnant with David, Margery had a mental breakdown and relocated the boys to Texas without their father's knowledge or consent. For the rest of 1988 the family moved back and forth between Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, and Texas, where they lived in The Woodlands, north of Houston. By the family's account, Margery tried to hide the new baby from Richard: David's first birth certificate gave a church's address and listed him only as "baby boy Oak," father unknown, his race recorded as black. That first certificate has never been found, but the address survives on David's later record: 525 South Houston in Humble, next door to St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church at number 527. That Christmas found the family back in the Woodlands; the baby book records simply, "we have David. School & church brought our tree & toys." At some point that year or the next the boys went into foster care in Texas; when, and for how long, is not known, and the family has asked the state for the records. David's birth certificate kept "father unknown" for more than fifteen years. By the family's account it was corrected most likely around David's sixteenth birthday, when he needed it for a driver's license; the corrected record names Richard Dixon Oak as his father.

Manchester

After her youngest son was born in 1991, she married his father, her third husband, in a private ceremony at their Elm Street apartment in Manchester. The date of that marriage has not been found. By the time Margery died in 2008, her death certificate described her as married but separated.

Her youngest son was born with Down syndrome and needed constant supervision, and by the family's account he became a huge part of Margery's life; the family lived in Section 8 housing and relied on SSI. As a child he loved watching Barney & Friends, and the family was evicted from their Front Street apartment over how loud he needed the television. He learned sign language and used an early tablet-style device to communicate, until severe hearing loss was discovered; hearing aids let him listen at a normal volume, his speech improved enormously, and he no longer needed either the sign language or the tablet. Margery's calendar and phone directory from 2007 and 2008, her last two documented years, show the rhythm of raising him as a teenager: therapy and doctor's appointments, an ear surgery, special-education meetings, and the ordinary life of a household that took in a family pet in 2007.

Margery also lived with serious mental illness: by the family's account, paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. David told a court interviewer much the same in 2019, years after her death. Travis was later given a diagnosis that, in the family's recollection, "seemed similar in nature"; his story gives the detail.

Who she was

Family recollections describe Margery cooking from scratch and baking cakes for birthdays and special occasions, and loving to window-shop. She believed the closer she parked, the luckier the trip and the better the deals would be, and would circle a lot looking for the closest spot. She planned Christmas with the same care, living modestly and budgeting carefully so that each child got one nice gift.

Her saved cards and letters show a woman who stayed close to her children and kept old friendships going. One of her sons wrote to her, "Mom, I love you very much even if I haven't always let you know." Travis wrote, "You've always been there for me... to have you for my mom, 'I love you' comes the closest." A birthday card from her youngest is signed with a row of x's and o's, and on another her stepson wrote, "I hope things get better for you. Don't forget all your other kids, we do need you here," with David adding his own wishes beneath it. She kept up decades-long correspondences: with a friend in San Antonio still writing to her from a nursing home in her early nineties, with a trusted confidante from at least 1995 on, and with her brother and sister back in Texas. When Jimmy died in 2003, condolence letters reached her from across her life, family and old friends and her first husband's relatives alike. Five days after his death, her brother wrote to "Dear Margie" that Jimmy had been "such a fine young man: good husband, wonderful father, and dear friend to so many," and that Travis and his brother had "gotten to be such adults out of all of this; so self-reliant and grown up."

Her death

Margery outlived Richard Oak Sr. by only about four months; he died in February 2008, she that June. She died on Monday, June 9, 2008, at her home in Manchester, at the age of 62, of respiratory failure due to severe COPD; the manner of death is recorded as natural.

Her death came suddenly into a household still raising a teenager. Three days later the family was already in contact with New Hampshire's child-welfare agency about her youngest son's care, and he entered foster care that same month. He remains a ward of the state today, and one of his brothers sees him from time to time.

Her sons Travis and David have stories of their own.

About the evidence

Her birth, baptism, marriages, divorce and death are documented in a newspaper birth notice, the 1950 census, a parish register, state indexes, her death certificate and her saved papers, cited below. Her last two years' household life comes from her calendar, in her hand, and the warmth of her relationships with her children from the cards and letters she kept. Her mental health, her youngest son's childhood and the family's circumstances while raising him come from the recollection of her son born in 1984; no record of her medical history survives, so a family account is the evidence there is. The memories of cooking, shopping and Christmas were recorded from family in September 2026. Her parents, her first two husbands and her sons Jimmy, Travis, Michael and David are named; other family members are described by their relationship to her.

Sources

• Austin American-Statesman, 25 October 1945, p. 12, birth notice (Clarkson paragraph), shown above.
• Hospital birth-certificate keepsake, Margery Lee Clarkson, born 24 October 1945 (private original).
• St. Mark's Episcopal Church, San Antonio, parish newsletter, April-May 1946, baptism register (private original).
• 1950 U.S. census, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, enumeration district 265-432A, sheet 25, lines 17-19 (National Archives). A names-and-relationships excerpt is shown above; the remaining columns are not shown.
• Margery (Clarkson) MacKinnon, obituary, J. N. Boufford & Sons Funeral Home, Manchester, N.H. (the page is dated 9 June 2008). Read the obituary.
• Texas Divorce Index, Margery L. Miller and Rellim J. Miller, married 17 December 1966, divorced 3 February 1977, Harris County.
• Texas Marriage Index, Margery Clarkson and Richard D. Oak, 20 May 1981, San Saba County.
• The family's baby book for Margery's son born in 1984, 1984-1988 (private original).
• State of Texas, Certificate of Birth, David Clarkson Oak, born 11 November 1988 (private).
• State of New Hampshire, Certificate of Death, Margery Lee Clarkson MacKinnon, died 9 June 2008 (masked copy on her page).
• Margery Clarkson, calendar and telephone directory, 2007-2008 (private original).
• Margery Clarkson, saved greeting cards and letters from her children, family and friends (private originals).
• Margery's son born in 1984, emails with New Hampshire's child-welfare agency, June 2008 (private originals).
• Family recollections, recorded September and October 2026 (private).