April 6, 2026
Introduction: In this first of a six-part series, James Pylant tells the saga of the Billingsley family in America, a tale involving genealogy, crime and Hollywood. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Here is the first article about the Billingsley family. Touching on genealogy, crime, and celebrity, it traces the family connections from Barbara Billingsley of Leave It to Beaver to Peter Billingsley of A Christmas Story, as well as to the owners of the famous Stork Club.
In the 1930s, when writing The Billingsley Family (Billingly-Billingslea) in America, compiler Harry Alexander Davis was sometimes met with opposition. “Many persons have been located who refused to furnish any information either by letter or interview,” he wrote. The Billingsley name, once tied to notoriety, gained fame through the Stork Club in New York – and Hollywood, too, in movies and television.
Family members descend from William Park Billingsley, born in Washington County, Tennessee, on 9 July 1798. Harry Alexander Davis noted that William P.’s granddaughter inherited his pair of hand scales made in London for weighing medicines. (1) In The Billingsley Family, Davis traced their bloodline from Quakers in Shropshire, England, who moved to Holland after being forced to leave their homeland in the early 1600s. They came to the New World and settled in the Virginia Colony sometime before 1649. (2)
In Tennessee, William P. died in Claiborne County, buried in an unmarked grave.
George M. Billingsley, William P.’s son, was born in Claiborne County on 23 January 1820. He married (1st) Eliza Shumate in 1842. The couple received an inheritance from Mary Martin, their neighbor. In her 1858 will, she left “all my personal property” and “all the money that belongs to me” to “make recompence to George and Eliza for their long attendance and kindness to me whilst I was not able to wait on myself.” In October of 1856, the county court had allocated $200 per year to George Billingsley for his care of Mary Martin, “a person of unsound mind.”
At the outbreak of the Civil War, George was a blacksmith who reportedly held $20,000 in real estate. Claiborne Countians, not unlike the majority of East Tennesseans, were anti-secessionists. In February 1861, the county voted 1,243 to 250 for “no separation.” Davis’s Billingsley genealogy vaguely mentioned that George left home in 1862 “to join the Union forces but was restrained with a short imprisonment.” (3)
However, in February 1863, a group of Claiborne County men petitioned Confederate President Jefferson Davis to release him, as he had been subjected to “very severe punishment.” The petition stated:
“Mr. Billingsley was arrested, perhaps in August last, by the Military authorities and from Knoxville, was sent as a prisoner to some place in Georgia, perhaps Atlanta… Mr. Billingsley was a citizen, having never connected himself with the military, and as petitioners are informed, was arrested and imprisoned on a charge principally of having shown some cattle belonging to a Southern man near to federal soldiers… Perhaps there was also some charge of Billingsley having entertained in his house for a short time some renegade East Tennesseans who were endeavoring to cross to Kentucky.
“As to the guilt or innocence of Billingsley upon these charges your Petitioners know not, but they stake that Billingsley was a man of good character… and looked upon by his neighbors as an honest law-abiding citizen.”
The discharge was allowed.
George’s release date is unknown, but it came within a short time of his wife Eliza’s death on 8 June 1863. That same year, he married (2nd) Louisa Wiley, daughter of Robert Wiley, a Claiborne County farmer who held $500 in real estate in 1850.
Robert Wiley’s wife Polly was the daughter of John Carr, another Claiborne County settler. John Carr’s will (dated 7 February 1843) named a daughter Polly among his ten children. Polly (Carr) Wiley died on 18 October 1855. Her widower served as her estate’s administrator. In June the following year, he reported cash received from the John Carr estate, saying, “There will probably be something more arising from the same source, but the affairs of the Estate are in litigation.”
Online family trees report that Polly (Carr) Wiley was the mother of Robert Wiley’s seven children, including Louisa. A 1922 death certificate for Louisa’s sister Mary (Wiley) Collingsworth stated that she was born in 1842 to Robert Wiley and Polly (Carr) Wiley.
Robert Wiley Billingsley, the only child of George M. Billingsley by Louisa (Wiley) Billingsley, was born on 18 July 1864. (4) Louisa died two years later.
George M. was made guardian of Robert’s inheritance from Louisa’s father, Robert Wiley. That changed in 1877 when George M. failed to renew his bond, and the court removed him as guardian. A final estate settlement was made in 1884, with R. F. Wiley acting as Robert Wiley Billingsley’s guardian.
After Louisa’s death, George M. Billingsley married (3rd) Elizabeth E. Chumley, who died in January 1870. (5) He married (4th) Cecilia “Celie” Pearce in 1882. He was 63 at that time; Cecilia was 18.
George died in Claiborne County on 26 September 1904. (6)
Robert Wiley Billingsley married Emily Collingsworth on 18 January 1883 in Claiborne County. She was born in Lee County, Virginia, on 1 December 1860.
In the mid-1890s, the Billingsleys moved to Oklahoma Territory on the heels of the Land Run of 1893. In the 1900 census, the family lived in Enid, where Robert worked as an engineer. By then, Emily had given birth to seven children. In 1902, Robert and his 16-year-old son, Robert Jr., were cutting corn eight miles east of Anadarko when they were attacked by three wild cats. The son fled, leaving his father alone in an hour-long fight with the felines in which he killed one and maimed another. Robert suffered a lacerated right hand and scratches on his head and shoulders. (7)
Robert later worked as a real estate agent. But the greater turmoil came from home, where he nearly landed in prison due to the outrageous escapades of his sons, who were wilder than the feral felines he’d fought.
More to come!
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Note on the header image: old photos and correspondence. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html
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(1) Harry Alexander Davis, “The Billingsley Family (Billingsly-Billingslea) in America” (Washington, D.C.: the author, 1936), p. 454.
(2) Ibid., p. 11.
(3) Ibid., p. 675.
(4) Robert W. Billingsley, no. 5187 (1918), “Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867—1952,” online database, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 12 May 2025).
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid.
(7) “Attacked by Three Wild Cats,” Shawnee [OK] Herald, 15 September 1902, p. 2.