Ann Conger Wilson

Mrs. Ann Conger Wilson age 82 of the Tanglewood Community of Smith County passed quietly at the family's Morris Drive home with her family at her bedside. She was pronounced deceased at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon September 7, 2025 by Gentiva Hospice of Livingston following a new flare up of lung cancer after seven years of leading-edge treatment resulting in remission.

Mrs. Wilson was at the Carthage Chapel of Sanderson Funeral Home and at her request will be cremated and that will be performed at Cumberland Family Services in Algood.

A private family and close friends only Celebration of Her Life will be observed at a later date.

The only daughter of two children, her father was the late John Lucian Conger who died on June 21, 1955 at the age of 54 in Murray, Kentucky, where he was General Manager of Western Kentucky Stages and retired Smith County 4th grade educator, Dorothy Katherine Savage Conger who died July 06, 2007 at the age of 93 and was born Ann Savage Conger in Nashville on December 20, 1942.

Mrs. Wilson was baptized at the age of 12 in Murray, Kentucky and after her family returned to Carthage after the death of her father, she became a member of the Carthage First Baptist Church Carthage.

She was a member of the 1961 graduating class at Smith County High School where she majored in mathematics, science and social studies. While at S. C. H. S., her extracurricular activities included being a member of the band, Beta Club, and editor of the "61 Owl yearbook and community fundraising. Here senior year she was voted the Most Industrious girl of her graduating class.

At First Baptist Church Carthage on September 9, 1962, she was united in marriage to Rome Community native and her high school sweetheart, Jerry Eugene Wilson.

It was stated of her in the '61 annual; "To be heavens self, Ann hath a way."

She was an avid reader, cat lover, and primary coordinator of her high school alumnus reunions.

Following high school she attended and graduated from George Peabody College in Nashville.

Her grandfather, Walter Kirk, "W.K." Savage was Smith County Road Commissioner during the construction of the Cordell Hull Bridge from 1934 through 1936. In 1908 J. W. "Wint" Williams and partners, William Edward "W. E." Myer and W.K. Savage organized the Carthage Packet Company. The sixty-six-ton flagship, "The Ed Myer" was constructed in 1909 and ran a route between Carthage, Nashville & Clarksville.

His sister, Frances "Fannie" Lee Savage Taylor who died at the age of 83 on February 19, 1964, was the former librarian at the Smith County Library.

Her grandfather, W.K. Savage Sr. died at the age of 78 on August 30, 1962 and her grandmother, Bessie Scruggs Savage died accidently at the age of 31 when a windstorm blew a building down on her at the family's Tanglewood farm on April 29, 1921 and Mrs. Savage was the first person to be buried in the Ridgewood Cemetery in the Town of Carthage.

Mrs. Wilson's great-grandfather, Rufus Lee Scruggs, served two terms as Smith County Sheriff starting in 1888 at the age of 30.

A cousin, the author Ann Patchett, spent so much time with the family while her parents attended and presented at international medical conferences, the she referred to Ann and Jerry as her parttime parents.

Surviving in addition to her husband Jerry of sixty-three years on Tuesday September 2nd, is her only sibling, a brother Tanglewood Community resident John Steven Conger who was born in August of 1948, in Murray, Kentucky, niece, Jennifer Kate Conger who was born in July of 1989 in South Carthage and her daughter, McKinley who are Knoxville residents, nephew, John Kirk Conger who was born in Lebanon, TN in August of 1992 and who now resides in the Tanglewood Community.

The Wilson Family has requested memorials to the Smith County High School Library or animal rescue organizations in Smith County.