Rev. William Williamson
Sometimes a man's career can be judged by his ancestors and some times by his posterity, and sometimes we can look to both, to give a fair estimate of him after his life work has been done. The subject of this sketch will bear favorable investigation in both ways.
The Rev. William Williamson was born September 23, 1762, near Greenville, N. C. He was the eldest of six children. His father, Thomas, was born in 1736 and his mother, Anne Newton, related to the family of Sir Isaac Newton and Rev. John Newton, was born in March, 1738. Her father emigrated from England with his wife and family. He and they were thirteen weeks crossing the ocean, contending with storms and sickness, and buried two children at sea. Anne and Elizabeth survived and married brothers. Thomas and Anne settled at Greenville, N. C, where all of their children were born.
During the Revolutionary War, William entered the Revolutionary army and served under General Gates in the hard campaign in the summer of 1780. His command saw very severe service and he has often related of forced marches in the great heat, when the soldiers were not allowed even to stop and drink at the roadside, and that often the soldiers were half starved.
Young Williamson was small for his age and not strong, and he and two hundred of his command were captured at the battle of Camden, S. C.. August 10, 1780. During young Williamson's service, his mother would would often stay up all night, and, assisted by her servants, cook food for the soldiers, which his father would carry to them in his wagon the day following. When the war was over, Thomas Williamson, with his family, moved to the Spartansburg District, S. C. He purchased a cotton plantation there, on which the county seat was afterwards located. After this event, he sought a place a few miles distant from the courthouse, on which he lived until his death in 1813.
Young William Williamson, after the Revolutionary War, was sent to Hampden Sidney College in Virginia, where he received a liberal education and was graduated. He studied theology and was installed as pastor of the Fair Forest Presbyterian Church in April, 1793.
The Rev. William Williamson believed in the married state. His first wife was a Miss Catherine Buford, of Abbeville, S. C. By her, he had four daughters, Anne Newton, who married Dr. William B. Willson in 1818; Mary married James Ellison; Elizabeth married Robinson Baird, and Esther married William Kirker.
His second wife was Jane Simth, of North Carolina, by whom he had two children, the Rev. Thomas Smith Williamson, missionary to the Dakotahs, and Jane Smith Williamson, who never married, but has always been known as Aunt Jane. He also had a third wife in his old age, Hannah Johnson, a widow.
The Rev. William Williamson had a brother, Thomas, sixteen years younger than himself. They were devotedly attached to each other and both espoused strong anti-slavery notions. Thomas became an accomplished physician.
William Williamson and his second wife regarded slavery as a great evil. While they owned slaves, they believed it wrong to sell them. Mrs. Williamson felt the condition of the slaves so strongly that she undertook to teach them to read. This, of course, came to the ears of her slaveholding neighbors and she was remonstrated with time and again to no purpose. Finally the patrol visited her and told her if she did not stop, she would be prosecuted under the stringent laws of South Carolina, forbidding slaves to be taught to read. Mrs. Williamson had high notions of right and wrong and was a Southern woman of great spirit. Her husband warmly sympathized with her and both thought they might do as they chose with their own property. The authorities, however, were as firm as Mrs. Williamson, and she and her husband resolved to take their slaves to a state where they could teach them to read without let or hinderance. They took their slaves and emigrated to Ohio in 1805. His father dying in 1813, by his will gave his slaves to his son William, but with directions to set them free. To accomplish this, his mother left South Carolina soon after the death of his father and brought her slaves to Ohio and set them free. She continued to live with her sons in Adams County till her death in 1820.
Our subject's mother was a superior woman, a sincere Christian and a philanthropist. She gave a liberal education to two of her slaves—Rev. Benjamin Templeton, who became a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, and John N. Templeton, who graduated at the Ohio University and became a successful teacher in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
William Williamson took up lands not far from Manchester and made a home there during his life. His lands were near those of his brother-in-law, Col. John Means, who married his sister Anne, born August 17, 1760. This sister had been married to Col. Means in South Carolina, April 10, 1778. Col. Means, however, did not move to Ohio till 1819.
The home of Rev. William Williamson in Adams County was called "The Beeches." It is now the property of John Meek Leedom. Our subject accepted a church at Cabin Creek, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, and about four miles from his home, on the sixteenth of May, 1805, and continued to minister to that church until 1820. His record there was that the church grew and prospered and he was esteemed one of the most devoted, pious and popular ministers of his day. He was also minister to the Presbyterian Church in West Union, Ohio, from May, 1805, till 1819, when he was succeeded by the Rev. Dyer Burgess. His religion must have seen sincere and deep, for in 1809, when the stone church was to be built at West Union, he subscribed one-half of his salary towards it. He was received into the Chillicothe Presbytery from the Second Presbytery of South Carolina, on August 28, 1805, along with the Rev. Robert G. Wilson and the Rev. Gilliland. They became the fathers of Presbyterianism in southern Ohio, and to him and his associates is due the strength and power of the Presbyterian Church in southern Ohio to-day. They laid the foundations upon which others built. Rev. Williamson was many times Moderator and often Clerk of the Chillicothe Presbytery. He was influential, active and useful in the church and as a citizen. When the Rev. Dyer Burgess took charge of the West Union Church in 1829, Rev. Williamson thereafter devoted his labors to the Manchester Church, so long as he was able to perform ministeral duties.
He died at "The Beeches," near Manchester, Ohio, November 29, 1839, aged seventy-seven years.
If, before becoming acquainted with his history, we had learned that of his patriotic father and heroic mother, and had learned that of his son, Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, and his daughter, Jane Williamson, we could outline his character and point out his place and power, just as the astronomer can find a new star and state its magnitude and give its orbit from those which surround it. We reason forward from Thomas Williamson and Anne Newton, his wife, that persons of such noble character must produce a like son. From the daughters and son reared by the Rev. William Williamson, we see the characters he has molded and sent forth to bless the world. No hero ever did nobler or better work than the Rev. Thomas Smith Williamson, the missionary to the Dakotas. No woman showed a greater spirit of devotion to the church and to humanity, than his sister, Jane Williamson, coadjutor in the work of evangelizing the Red Men. If they were Thomas Williamson's children, what must have been the father, to whom they owed the missionary spirit? His four daughters, by his first wife, were godly, pious mothers, who reared large families of sons and daughters and taught them the love of God and the devotion to right and justice, which characterized their father and mother before them.
The descendants of Rev. William Williamson were wonderfully numerous. They, in their several generations obeyed the eleventh commandment to multiply and replenish the earth, and they to-day, wherever found, are the same God-fearing, God-loving people—pious and devoted to the right as they understand the right, as their progenitor was before them.
The memory of these pioneers in the Church of God should be carefully preserved and treasured. This generation should know every detail of their labors and sacrifices.
Where a man could break up a pleasant home, bid adieu to all he had ever known and travel eight hundred miles through a wilderness that he might live in a free State and might give the blacks he owned, the blessings of freedom—such a man was a hero and he deserves to be remembered by posterity.
This generation should be proud of such a man and revere his memory, and regret that it has no such opportunity to demonstrate its devotion to right and principle.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900