John Williams
John Williams was born in Georgia about 1796. Family accounts say he married Winney Moore in 1821, and no record of the marriage has been found. Winney was born in South Carolina about 1801. She was a daughter of Lewis Moore, who later held land in Butler County, Alabama.
The couple were in Alabama by 1827, when their son Chapman was born there. Every child of theirs on the 1850 census was born in Alabama. Their land lay in Township 8, Range 15 of Butler County, in the pine country around Greenville, the county seat. The Greenville tract books put a Calvin D. Williams on an entry adjoining Lewis Moore's in that township.
On 18 October 1850 the census taker for Butler County, Wm. H. Ringgold, came to his house and entered it as dwelling 232. John Williams was fifty four, a farmer, born in Georgia, with real estate worth $500. Below him the enumerator wrote Wineferd, 29, born in South Carolina, and then Chetman 23, Ellen 19, Elizabeth 18, James 13, Francis 11 and Margaret 9, all born in Alabama. A girl named Caroline, 7, sits on the next line. Chetman is the son known everywhere else as Chapman L. Williams. The age written for Winney is wrong. The 1860 census gives her birth year as 1801, which made her about forty nine that autumn.
The house next door, dwelling 231, belonged to Asa Hinson, a farmer of fifty four born in Georgia. With him were his wife Jane, 44, also Georgia born, and a boy of twelve named William. Jane was Winney's sister. The 1850 census asked nobody how they were related, so the page does not say so. Her father's estate papers do, fourteen years later.
John Williams died before 15 December 1852. On that day the probate court of Butler County appointed Calvin D. Williams executor of "the last will and testament of John Williams deceased." An executor gave a bond, a sum he and his sureties would forfeit if he mishandled the estate. Calvin's was set at $1,500, with Ambrose Smith as his security. A bond was normally twice the value of the estate it covered, so John Williams left property worth about $750. Ambrose Smith was the husband of Winney's sister Peggy.
On the night of 12 April 1853 the Butler County courthouse burned. Every book and paper in the probate office went with it, his will and all the papers of his estate among them. In September the court appointed Calvin again and took a new bond from the same two men for the same sum. The will was never copied back into the record. What it said, and which children it named, is lost.
Family accounts make Calvin a son, Calvin Delaney Williams. In 1857 Calvin D. Williams and Chapman L. Williams sat together on a sheriff's jury to set off a widow's dower in Butler County.
His widow kept the house for at least another decade. In 1860 she was still keeping house in Precinct 2 with Francis and Caroline, and she entered public land of her own in Section 30 of the family's township, beside Francis M. Williams. Chapman's homestead lay in Sections 29 and 30 of the same township when he died in 1887. In June 1864 the court settling her father's estate named her "Winney Williams widow of John Williams decd."
His sons went to war. Francis Marion served as a private in the 33rd Alabama Infantry. James Jasper had gone to Texas about 1860 with the family of his sister Margaret, who married a Kite, and he was wounded at Mansfield in Louisiana in Company A of the 12th Texas Infantry. James lived until 1928, Francis until 1933, Margaret until 1937. Mary Caroline married an Arant and died at McKenzie in 1931.
The Ellen of 1850 is probably Leathie Ellen Williams, who married Sherrod Sims Howell in 1851. Several things point the same way. His was the only household in Butler County headed by a John Williams in 1850, and she was the only Ellen Williams of marrying age in the county. Two of Leathie's children named their mother on their death certificates as Ellen Williams, one of them adding Greenville, Alabama. Her grave marker reads Leathie E. Williams. And one family list of John and Winney's children includes a Letha Ellen. No record calls her his daughter, because the 1850 census never asked and the will that would have said so burned. The parentage is probable, not certain.
Where he is buried is not known. One memorial gives him the years 1795 to 1852 and no grave.
Children
Sources
If John Williams is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "John Williams (b. 1796)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-williams-1796-7aa6b4.