Frances D. Searcy was born in November 1841, in Tennessee to Reuben and Mary Searcy. Her father was a farmer who owned $5,200 of real estate and $2,190 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Sumner County, Tennessee, until the 1850s, when they moved to Wilson County, Tennessee.
She married Charles W. Wilkinson on December 9, 1868, and they had at least two children: John, born around 1869; and Walter Lee, born around 1872. They lived in Sumner County, and her husband worked as a farmer. By 1870, they owned $500 of real estate and $200 of personal property. She remained in Sumner County for the rest of her life, and she died there of “mytral regurgitation” on March 9, 1918.