Gertrude Susan Goldsmith Wallis, My Maternal Grandmother
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 37 of 2026
Prompt: A Small Detail That I Love
Years ago, during a visit with my aunt Gladys, I jotted down bits of family history as she talked. At the top of one page I wrote a small detail about her mother: “Susan Goldsmith — telephone operator in Ramona, OK. when single.”
A note I wrote during a visit to Aunt Gladys.
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I tucked that detail away, but I never forgot it. I loved the glimpse it gave me of Grandmother Wallis as a young woman, before she became anyone's wife or mother.
Gertie’s obituary states, “In 1903 she moved with her parents to Indian Territory, and in 1910 married C.B. Wallis.” So she was a telephone operator sometime between 1903 and 1910.
C.B. Wallis & Gertrude Susan Goldsmith wedding portrait, cleaned up by ChatGPT.
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So when did Ramona get telephone service?
Apparently, not long after Gertie got there.
On October 7, 1904, The Ramona Herald reported that three telephone lines were “seeking admittance” to the town. Two weeks later, on October 21, the newspaper published Ordinance No. 31, granting W. H. Gates the right to use the streets and alleys of Ramona to erect poles and wires and to build, operate and maintain local and long-distance telephone lines.
By March 1905, the system was operating. The Ramona Herald was advertising its own telephone number—No. 40.
The little telephone system grew quickly. By November 24, 1905, the Pioneer Telephone Company had issued a new directory, printed by the Herald’s job department. The cable was already full with just 50 telephones, and new subscribers would have to wait until more could be accommodated.
About that same time, the telephone office was getting new quarters. Pioneer planned to occupy rooms on the second floor of the new Bass building, with the move scheduled for about December 1.
By March 1906, the company, now referred to as the Pioneer Telephone and Telegraph Company, announced a 45 percent reduction in toll rates over its lines in Indian Territory and Oklahoma.
But Ramona was growing faster than its telephone system could keep up.
On July 6, 1906, the Herald reported that the local telephone office had received a carload of new poles and that new cable would soon arrive. Residents in some of the newer parts of town had been unable to get telephones because the lines had not reached them.
The newspaper made a point of saying that the problems were not the fault of the local operators or managers. There had been little complaint about their service. The problem was the inadequate system they had to work with.
A week later, the promised improvements were underway. New poles were being set, new telephones installed, and lines extended throughout town and out to the oil fields. Another new telephone directory had already been ordered.
Was Gertie one of those “local operators” mentioned in July 1906?
I don't know. I searched the newspapers for Goldsmith, Gertie and Gertrude without finding her connected to the telephone office. Aunt Gladys didn't tell me exactly when her mother worked there, only that she had been a telephone operator before she married.
But now I can picture it.
ChatGPT imagined Gertrude Susan Goldsmith as a telephone operator.
Click image for larger view.
Gertie was about eighteen when Ramona's first telephone system began operating. During the next few years, she watched a system of only fifty telephones expand across town and into the surrounding oil fields. Somewhere during those years, she climbed the stairs to a telephone office and sat at a switchboard, connecting the calls of people she probably knew.
It is a small detail in the long life of Gertrude Susan Goldsmith Wallis.
But it lets me see Gertie, the young woman, before she became Grandmother Wallis.
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