LaVerne Lillious Davison
LaVerne L. Davison, 73, died at her home in Harrison November 29. "She had put up a gallant fight against a debilitating heart condition for the past several years but could not overcome the ravages of the disease," writes her son.
LaVerne Lillious Sturdivant was born September 23, 1908, to Joseph H. and Adaline (Rogers) Sturdivant. Birth place was a sod house, on the Sturdivant Ranch near the headwaters of Sheep Creek, west-central Sioux County, Neb.
Her parents were early day homesteaders of Sioux County, being among the first to settle that part of the county. Their homestead was established in 1891.
Joseph Sturdivant was a cowboy who had trailed herds of cattle along the Chisholm Trail across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and into Nebraska and on other trails northwestward into Wyoming and Montana during the 1880's. Her mother, Adaline Rogers, had come west with her grandparents, the John L. Bowerrocks, and had homesteaded in the Bayard area in the late 1880's.
LaVerne's early years were spent on the Sturdivant ranch and she attended county schools in the area. She graduated from the Torrington High School with the class of 1927.
She married C. Sid Williams, Sr., Sioux county Sheriff, August 5, 1927, at Greeley, Colo. Sid was a pioneer also, having homesteaded in northwest Sioux County in the late 1880's. She met Sid when he trailed a horse thief through the Sturdivant Ranch.
They were the parents of two children, Donald Ray and Ila Mae. Sid died May 6, 1938 during his third term in office.
He married Fred. B. Davison September 22, 1941, at Dakota City, Neb. They lived two years on a dairy farm near Madison, Wis., before moving to their permanent home on the Lower 33 Ranch on the Niobrara River. They made their home here over the next 30 years before their marriage was dissolved in 1973.
Since then LaVerne had made her home in Harrison.
Survivors include her two children, Ila M. Mullennix of Fresno, Calif., and Donald R. Williams of Oklahoma City, Okla., nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren; two brothers Frank Sturdivant, Pagosa Springs, Colo., and Charles Sturdivant of Guernsey.
Pallbearers were Tom Broderick of Harrison and five of her grandsons, Sid, Steve, Jeff and Don D. Williams and John Laettner. Internment is beside her parents in the Morrill, Neb. cemetery.