The Secret Life of Wilma Nelson the Subject of Upcoming Film Project
For years, Levi Pennington, a junior studying film at Huntington University in Indiana, heard stories from his mother, Angie Hansen, a genealogy buff from Sycamore, about the mysteries surrounding his great-great-grandmother, who called herself Wilma Estelle Nelson and resided, which they found out later, in Macomb, Illinois.
When it came time for his junior year project, the woman named Wilma was the perfect subject.
"Our search for Estrella (Wilma Estelle) has gone on longer than Levi has been alive.
He grew up hearing about it at the dinner table, and somewhere along the way it became his story too," Hansen said. "He was drawn to how much mystery and intrigue it holds, and he wanted to be the one to tell it on film."
According to Hansen, her great-greatgrandmother "Wilma," and the daughter she had given up, Hansen's grandmother, Norma Jean Hickman, lived in Macomb, and one year, they only lived four blocks apart on the same street. Hansen and Pennington ventured to Macomb Oct. 17 to film various locations around town that Hansen found in her research about her family, including two Macomb houses at the center of the story. What makes the story so interesting is that neither woman ever told anyone about knowing each other, and her descendants don't know if they even ever spoke, Hanson pointed out. And then there's the matter of Wilma Estelle Nelson herself, who was really Estrella Suarez.
"I don't want to give the film away, but I can tell you this: the story was never what it seemed. Estrella was married off young, in an arrangement she didn't choose. She buried children. She lived through things no one in our family ever spoke about, because no one in our family ever knew," Hansen shared. "She was a woman with very few choices, and some of the ones she made left wounds that ran through generations. Over her life she left more than one family behind. By the time she settled in Macomb in 1937, she had become Wilma Estelle Nelson.
We know she worked at a drugstore soda fountain, and she lived here until her death in 1986. The name she chose wasn't random. Every piece of it came from someone she had lost."
Hansen's grandmother, Norma Jean Hickman, Wilma's/Estrella's daughter, was placed in state care as a little girl. She was later adopted and raised in Macomb. Norma Jean continued to live in Macomb throughout her life, cooking for a WIU fraternity for 12 years. She married Frank Douglas and had two children, one of which is Hansen's mother, Chris Poff, who was born and raised in Macomb.
"She spent much of her life looking for her birth mother, who was listed on the adoption records as Stella Smith DeBoard, but who was really Wilma/Estrella. She even hired a private investigator, but she never found her," Hansen said. "I've carried on the search for about 25 years, but we didn't know Estrella was her mother until after my grandmother died. My grandmother's death bed wish was for us to find her mother.
Sadly, I couldn't do it in time, but now we know Estrella was her mother."
DNA Cracked the Case
Hansen said over the years, Estrella changed her name so many times that the paper trail kept going cold during their search … until DNA testing changed everything. Matches revealed the separate lives she had lived and the families she had left in each one.
"Without DNA, we would never have found her other lives, let alone put them together," she added. "Estrella made sure no one person ever held her whole story. We didn't uncover a story that already existed.
We assembled it for the first time from fragments scattered across families who each knew only a piece. My sister and I share the journey on our podcast and Substack."
It was only after the DNA match that Hansen, her sister, Cyndi Shiels, and Pennington confirmed those findings through census records, city directories, newspaper archives and the Illinois Regional Archives at Western Illinois University. The research also led through immigration records from Spain and to a husband who used multiple identities across five military ID numbers.
"DNA testing connected three branches of the family who never knew the others existed. "This Thanksgiving, some of those newly found relatives will gather in person for the first time!", Hansen exclaimed. "It's hard to not keep leaking details because there is so much to the story. The first DNA match led to a first cousin and our ancestry trees looked nothing alike. I said I was looking for a Stella Smith who married Christopher in Springfield in 1920s. Dumbfounded, my cousin said, 'My grandmother was Estrella and she disappeared 96 years ago. We never knew where she went.' And so began the journey of uncovering the many lies and lives of Estrella Stella Estelle Suarez Smith DeBoard Scott Nelson!" "Buried Threads" aka "Finding Stella Smith"
The film, "Finding Stella Smith," is narrated by three generations of women in the family: Hansen; her sister and their mother.
On Saturday during their visit to Macomb, which was a trip down memory lane for his grandmother, Pennington interviewed all three women at the Western Illinois University Malpass Library before filming at the two houses on Jefferson Street. The crew finished at Oakwood Cemetery after dark.
Hickman is buried in Macomb's Oakwood Cemetery and Estrella is buried in Colchester's public cemetery.
Pennington plans to finish a short version for his class by the end of the semester, then expand it over the rest of the school year into a longer film. Hansen said he also plans to enter both versions in Huntington's film competition and in regional festivals.
Pennington's mother and her sister share the search on their podcast and Substack, "Buried Threads," at buriedthreads.substack. com and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Updates about the search, and Pennington's film, will be posted on Hansen's Substack.
Levi interviews his mother, Angela Hansen, for his documentary on his mysterious great-great-grandmother, Stella Smith.
Levi also talked to his aunt, Cindy Spiels, for his documentary film project.
