Person:Willoughby Williams (2)

History of Davidson County, Tennessee, W.W. Clayton (1880), pages 414-15, contains the following biographical sketch:

"COL. WILLOUGHBY WILLIAMS.

   Col. Willoughby Williams is a North Carolinian by birth, having been born near Snowhill, in what is now Greene County, on the 14th of June, 1798.  His father was a Welshman and was a major in the Revolution, surviving through the war, and although his widow, the mother of Col. Williams, afterwards married Governor McMinn, by some special legislation she drew a pension during her life. She lived to quite an advanced age, and died in 1856. She was the daughter of Col. James Glasgow, who was at one time Secretary of State of North Carolina. 

    Col. Williams married Miss Nancy D. Nichols, the daughter of Capt. John Nichols, a most estimable lady, 
with whom he lived, using his own words, 'in the most perfect love and harmony for twenty-one years,' when she 
died, causing such a shock to my feelings that I was only sustained by the consciousness that neither in word nor deed 
had I ever caused a tear to fall from her eye or a pang to cross her bosom." For thirty-five years he has remained 
a widower, preferring the sweet memories of a happy married life to the risk of experimenting in sacred relations. 
From the death of liis wife, his life has been devoted -- constant, unceasing labor -- to the children of his happy 
marriage. Of nine children born six are still living, to wit: John H. Williams, Mary Jane McNairy, widow of 
Col. E. C. McNairy, McLemore H. Williams, Willoughby Williams, Jr., Ellen, wife of Marion W. Lewis, Nancy D., 
wife of C. A. Nichol. Robert N. Williams married the daughter of Samuel D. Morgan, and died leaving a family 
of children.  Andrew J. was killed in the late war. The other child died in infancy. 

The highest point in the life of our subject is a virtue based on superior judgment, which has been developed in 
but few characters, to wit : that of persistently eschewing the allurements of office and firmly resisting all attempts 
to bring him into public life to the detriment of a loving and beloved family, and to the substitution of petty 
annoyances for the sweet enjoyment of a happy paternal home. 

   When a young man Col. Williams was for six years sheriff of Davidson County, and now in his declining years 
he remembers with the greatest pleasure that after going out of office he was never in a single instance called on to 
explain one of his many official acts. 

    At one time - about 1837 - the president of the Bank of Tennessee having resigned, in his absence he, being at 
the time engaged in planting in Florida, was without his knowledge unanimously elected president of the bank, 
which was in suspension, and in the estimation of the board of directors imperatively demanded for its restoration 
his superior and well-known financial skill. This he, upon notice, promptly declined; but, coming home, his 
friends, Governor Carroll, George W. Campbell, and others, prevailed on him for the safety of the then comparatively 
new State bank and for the good of the Democratic party, for which he was always willing to work, to accept. 
Continuing in this position only until he brought about resumption, he resigned and resumed control of his private affairs. 
Planting in Florida during the Seminole war was so hazardous that he broke up and moved most of his slaves to 
Arkansas, where he remained planting until the war came, which emancipated his slaves.  Having about five hundred 
slaves, he removed them to the Brazos Bottom, Texas, and remained with them during the war, and then brought 
them (free people) back to Arkansas. 

    The end of the war not only brought the emancipation of his slaves, but found him in debt, mostly as surety for 
his friends, about three hundred thousand dollars. Nearly all in a like situation went into bankruptcy; but though 
nearly seventy years old he resolved to struggle through, and now he is entirely out of debt and one of the most 
successful planters in Arkansas. 

    Still making Tennessee his home, as he always has done, he spends about half his time on his plantation in Arkansas, 
looking closely after his large planting interests, and by his superior judgment is making the raising of cotton profitable 
to himself as well as large numbers of his former slaves. His relations with them are of a most friendly character; 
he knowing their weaknesses and they knowing his worth, the rights of each are never infracted. 

   Col. Williams' father died when he was only four years old, at a camp near Dandridge, in East Tennessee, when the 
family were moving from North Carolina. 

   While very young, Willoughby went into a store at Knoxville, and worked as a store-boy on a salary sufficient 
to buy his clothes, and then for a time at Abingdon, Va.  His mother having stopped in Roane County, in East Tennessee, 
after the death of his father, he came first to Nashville, riding on horseback in company with her to visit his 
two aunts, Mrs. Col. Donelson, whose husband was the brother of Mrs. Jackson, and Mrs. Judge Robert Whyte. 
Remaining for nearly a year that time, he was much at the house of Gen. Jackson, and, being a boy of quick perception, 
he imbibed many of his lifetime ways from that early visit to the coming great hero. His next visit to Nashville 
was in 1818, when he witnessed, and is the only living man now who did witness, the fight between Jackson and the 
Bentons.  Nashville became his home in 1818. The connection between himself and the Jackson family brought 
him, at a very early day, into close relations with the old general, and it can be said with absolute certainty that of 
all the men now living, none were so close to Gen. Jackson for so long a time.  A man of the greatest prudence, and 
himself of unbounded popularity, of good address and courtly manners, and firmly fixed in all the principles of a 
Democratic government, Gen. Jackson looked upon him through all his struggles as one of his staunchest and most 
reliable friends. 

    The relations between Col. Williams and Gen. Sam Houston, at the time in the history of that great man when he 
resigned the office of Governor and put Tennessee's greatest secret under cover, of separating from his wife without telling 
the world the cause, were of a most intimate and confidential character. It was to him that Gen. Houston 
perhaps first communicated his purpose, and to him were intrusted some of the details of this most extraordinary 
move; but it is due to the memory of the hero of San Jacinto that, so far as Col. Williams knows or believes, he
never, through his long life, communicated to any living person the secrets of this domestic tragedy."

   Through a life now turning into the eighty-third year Col. Williams has been a man of strict temperance and uniform 
habits, never intoxicated, and never playing even a game of cards for amusement. He attributes his success in 
life in a great measure to the advice given him by his life-time friend and adviser, Gen. Jackson.  With him, next to 
the sweet memory of his wife and the love of his children, the name of Andrew Jackson is most sacred. He is a living 
evidence of what has become historic, to wit: that Gen. Jackson's friends were devoted to him in a wonderful manner, 
exceeding even the devotion of Napoleon's followers. 

    He has lately, with his own hand, written up the early events of Davidson County, giving families, their marriages 
and deaths, together with localities, roads, and many incidents of early life in Davidson County, which for detail is 
without a parallel, coming from one man's recollection of old time. 

    Col. Williams is above medium size, remarkably erect, with a strong face full of decision as well as benevolence. 
He is one of the most companionable of men, quick of speech, accurate in thought, chaste in language, exceedingly 
neat in person, and in his memory of past events and people he has no peer. He is a living library of all that has taken 
place in Tennessee, of a public nature, since 1809."
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