Edna Alline Thompson

Edna Alline Thompson was born on September 30, 1890, at the McAdams Community in Walker County, Texas — about thirty minutes after her identical twin sister Ethel Arrine Thompson. They were daughters of Thomas Jefferson Thompson and Margaret Annaliza McAdams (“Tommie”), whose own mother was a daughter of John McAdams Jr., the Texas Revolution veteran and pioneer.¹

Their father died around 1899, when the twins were about nine years old. Their grandmother Tommie helped raise them.

Marriage

Edna married Thomas Claud Roberts and settled near Huntsville. Her twin sister Ethel married James Walter Morris, the barber of Huntsville, on Ethel’s sixteenth birthday in 1906.¹

The Twin Houses

In their later years, both widowed, the twins lived in almost identical houses, side by side. Their children were interchangeable between the two households — a single extended family divided only by a yard.¹

Ethel died on November 16, 1948, at the age of fifty-eight. Among Edna’s personal effects after her own death was a note that captured the bond between them: she never had to call for Ethel, because just when she needed her, she would look up and see Ethel coming.¹

Death

Edna died in April 1954, also of heart failure. She outlived her twin by nearly six years.