Photo of Sophia Olney Haynes

Sophia William Olney was born May 7, 1893, to Elizabeth and John Tanner Olney in Milford, Texas. The family moved back to Burnet County where the Olney family had previously lived when my mother was a very small child. they lived on the Colorado river farm which had been bought by her paternal grandparents upon their arrival in Texas from Virginia in the year 1850.

Mother's childhood was filled with the happiness that comes from a warm and loving family life. Her parents were dearly loved and revered by all the children.

When mother was of high school age, the family moved into the town of Burnet during school months so she and her brother, Dan, could go to school. The lower grades were attended in a country schoolhouse. She took Latin, mathematics, English and was well equipped, educationally, to enter a university but did not do so.

Dances held in the Burnet Opera House were social events in those days; and at one of those dances, mother met my father, Charles Ernest Haynes. They fell in love and married in Sept 1915. My mother and father were happily married until his death in 1944.

Mother has been very proud of her ancestral lineage. Her paternal forebears came to America from England in 1632 and helped settle the first thirteen colonies. This family has contributed soldiers for the American Revolution, the Civil War, farmers, ranchers, ministers of the gospel, an Ambassador to England, a Secretary of State, an Arizona legislator and lots of plain, good citizens to the American scene. There was even an "outlaw" among them during the wild days right after the Civil War. Mother never liked to admit to the possibility that this young man was anything other than "wild!"

...At this writing she is 94 years 9 months old.