Williams Family #2 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
While I have hopes that this webpage will become developed more completely in the future, for now this Williams family only consists of one known generation. My Williams ancestor married into Smotherman, and my line of descent can be followed from there by checking out my Smotherman Family section (see "surnames" tab/link above). What remains in the generation above this Williams-Smotherman marriage seems to be a lot of confusion and conflation. So this page will be, for now, almost solely devoted to an excursus on the parentage of the Mary Williams who married Lewis Smotherman. The basic family structure, as supposed by many, for this family is as follows: Editor's Note: The below excursus describes the difficulty in pinning down the name of the patriarch of the family. It is variously suggested that his name is James David, or James, or David, or William. I have changed my mind on this issue a number of times, but, based on the information I was able to discover during the course of my research related to writing this page, and equally importantly, the information I WAS NOT able to discover, it is my current opinion that the person identified as James David Williams does not exist, and that the true name of the patriarch of this family was instead William Williams. This is the name carried through from the Smotherman family lore. But the Williams family lore representations on the internet are more prevalent, and will be searched for more through search engines and the like. Therefore, it is preserved below, where it appears. However, I believe any interested reader would do better to substitute the name "William" where they now see the names "James David" in the below register report. {GGB}
children: The patriarch's name is given above as James David Williams for the sake of convention only. There are, however, competing claims for the name of Mary's father. The most widespred claims that I have seen for his name include:
1. James David Williams I am going to present some items here that relate to people with these names, in an attempt to separate individuals, and to point out clear errors where they are evident. I am mostly going to do this without editorialization. I am just going to show facsimile of whatever documents I have seen, and perhaps include a few remarks here and there. The first item is the Spence Bible. It makes claims about the earlier generations of Williams, and claims that the patriarch is named simply "David Williams".
But notice the following, from McBride:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
While the Spence Bible shows the name simply as "David Williams", this seems to be at odds with the material presented in the Rutherford County history book. This volume draws a distinction between "David Williams" on the one hand, and "James Williams" on the other.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It is easy to see how these two men, James and David, could be conflated. They were both evidently Revolutionary War Patriots, and presumably born about the same time, died about the same time and perhaps in the same county. This confusion only gets compounded when you take into consideration the entry in the Spence Bible. Furthermore, both men owned land on Stones River.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The land in the above 1807 deed from James Williams to John Warnick can be traced from its origin as a Revolutionary War Land Grant.
With the above information, it is possible to derive a graphic that depicts the placement of the 200 acres owned by James Williams within the original bounds of the Revolutionary War land grant (though the depiction of Stones River with respect to scale surely is over-emphasized).
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I have seen much of the above information repeated, but instead giving the name "William Williams" as the father. The only indication I can find of actual, historic persons named William Williams in that era, in that location, are the ones mentioned in the following estate sale (however, see the Hoover SAR application (below) for another man of the same name).:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you research this family, you will probably come across a statement of family lore that goes something like the following:
Further, some places will claim that this German couple is Archibald Lingow and Martha (Cleveland) Lingow.
How would that work? If he was born in 1758, and came to America at age 8 (thus 1766), then how could he have been in the care of someone who wasn't even born for another 14 years?
Competing claims add to the confusion about the name of the patriarch.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I should just add before I close that it was pretty rare for a person born in Scotland in the 1750s to have a middle name. My conclusion for now is that the name should be Williams Williams, and that the Spence Bible is in error. The names James Williams, David Williams, and James David Williams, upon attempt at documentation continue to appear to be phantoms, or else people of that name with no real indication that they are the same person (as opposed to people who merely share the same very common name). Meanwhile, William Williams has actual probate records which are the right time, place, and mention the right family names. In short, the 1758 Scotland origin continues to persist only as legend, and the William Williams origin, as suggested in the Smotherman records, is confirmed at every turn. Some other errors should probably be addressed here as well. If you look on WorldConnect for exact dates for this James David Williams, you will see a claim of birth of 17 September 1757, and a date of death of 23 August 1832. First of all this would make it fairly difficult to imagine that he is the same person who wrote his will in Rutherford County (viz., David Williams), since he applied for pension on that date. I suppose it is possible that he applied the day he died, but that doesn't seem likely to me. If you click the Ancestry hints on the WorldConnect file, it gives as a possible connection the SAR applications of two men; one is William Williams, and the other is James Williams. Both of these men are clearly unrelated (at least very closely) to our Williams man of subject. The birth and death dates are those of William Williams who was born in Fairfax County, Virginia, and died in Gallia County, Ohio. Clearly, this is not the man born in Scotland and died in Tennessee.
The other SAR application comes from James Williams with "correct" birth and death years, but seeming other data conflicting. This James (according to the application) married Zelia Norman in 1783, and had a son William (1785-1862) who married Polly Gannon. I think this is a North Carolina, then later Kentucky and West Virginia family, not a Rutherford/Bedford, Tennessee family.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Perhaps the proof that the father of Enoch Williams and the father of Mary (Williams) Smotherman are the same person will come in the form of DNA analysis. The Smotherman Y-chromosomal type is already known (see the Smotherman Surname DNA Project at FTDNA). And at least one sample of Williams Y-chromosomal DNA has been tested that derives from a person claiming descent from James David Williams, via his grandson James Granderson Williams. However, with autosomal testing in full swing, it should be possible to uncover relationships between the groups using the FTDNA Family Finder DNA test. One sample from a descendant of Mary (Williams) Smotherman is already in the testing pool...just waiting for someone from another of these Williams lines to test similarly.
Meanwhile, the Williams Surname DNA Project outlines the claimed DNA type for this present Williams family, and shows some DNA matches to other Williams men that may prove informative.
There is something noteworthy in the DNA matches. Two of the DNA matches claim descent from one John Jackson Williams (1827-1878), who was the father of Spottswood Gardner Williams (1855-1884). There is lore in their families that they descend from Governor Alexander Spottswood. The information at Find-a-Grave for John Jackson Williams reads, "John Jackson Williams, born in Richmond of Virginia, moved to Livingston of Sumter County, Alabama. Here, he married Catherine (Kate) Bunn, daughter of Martha Bunn. Martha, a widow of North Carolina, also moved to Sumter County, Alabama." The other match descends from a line of Williams who migrated directly from England to Australia. I haven't been able to contact him, so I can only decribe what I have heard through the grapevine from the other matches...and that's all I know. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(five generations of descendants) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|