CAPTAIN
WILLIAM M. WILLIAMS. There are few citizens of Cairo who do not enjoy a
personal acquaintance with Captain William M. Williams, claim agent of the
Mobile & Ohio Railway Company for the division from St. Louis to Cairo, a
man who, though deeply engrossed in the concerns of one of this section's
largest transportation companies, has found time to cultivate his social
nature and to enjoy the pleasures of companionship with his fellow men. As a
settler he is one of the mile-posts of progress, the span between Cairo's
infancy and its strong and vigorous life as a metropolis, for he first
became a resident of the city in 1855. Captain Williams was born near
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, May 4, 1831, a son of Isaac and Mary (Torrence)
Williams. From Pennsylvania the parents of Captain Williams moved into
Virginia and then on into Kentucky, and while living there both passed away,
the mother in 1844 and the father in 1855. She was a daughter of Albert
Torrence, an Irish gentleman who settled about Fort Pitt, and there reared a
family, while Mr. Williams was a son of George Williams, a native of North
Carolina, who tilled the soil in Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania,
and at his death in the last-named state left a large family.
Captain Williams' education came from the country districts of Pennsylvania
and Virginia, where his father was engaged in farming, and he made the best
of his youthful opportunities. That he was of manly parts early is evidenced
by his publishing The Daily Wheeling Journal, of Wheeling, Virginia, when
only seventeen years of age. This gave him an experience of great value in
later life and his contributions to local publications of recent years
reflect the training of the period when he was associated with the staff of
a newspaper. When he abandoned the paste-pot and the editorial pencil, he
engaged in the manufacture of salt at West Columbia, Virginia, in the
Kanawha Valley, and continued that business until he came to Cairo,
Illinois, in 1855, and associated himself with a cousin in the wholesale
house of Williams, Stephens & Company. The firm erected the first brick
building in the village, the one now occupied by R. Smyth & Company, at Nos.
503-507 Ohio street, and the business of the concern was important for that
day of river transportation, but was dissolved in 1859. During the four
years of Captain Williams' connection with this enterprise he chanced to
meet many of the distinguished men of the country as they passed to and fro,
and more than a half a century afterward he contributed to the local press
of Cairo, upon invitation of friends, a few articles upon the famous people
he had known and his impressions of them. Of the old historic characters of
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, he knew them all, and of the very few who
made reputations for themselves in other channels subsequently especially
the Bard of Hannibal, Mark Twain he has a distinct recollection. Leaving
Cairo in 1859, Captain Williams went to Arizona and engaged in mining as the
superintendent of the St. Louis Mining Company. The presence of Americans in
that (at that time) really Mexican field aroused the antipathy of the
"Greaser" population, and they fell to and slew them all but the Captain
himself, and the enterprise was abandoned. He next joined W. S. Grant, who
had a government contract for furnishing supplies for the troops and animals
serving in both Arizona and New Mexico, and remained in the West until the
outbreak of hostilities ushering in the Civil war. He then returned to
Washington, D. C., made his final report and settlement with the Government,
and cast his fortunes with the Confederate cause. He was connected with
General Van Dorn's army, operating in the country east of the Mississippi
river, and while he took part in the contest was in detached service. He was
in the vicinity of Vicksburg when that city fell into Federal hands, and
then terminated his connection with military and took up civil life in the
city. Entering the river traffic and establishing a small line of steamboats
plying in and out of Vicksburg, he did a profitable business while he
remained a resident of that city.
In 1870 the wheel of fortune
turned toward Cairo again for Captain Williams and he returned to this city.
He first built a distillery, but soon disposed of it, and during the next
few years he devoted himself to independent pursuits. In 1880 he entered the
employ of the old St. Louis & Cairo and Mobile & Ohio Railroad as its claim
agent, and for a time did the work of the whole system. This field of
activity has given him the opportunity of his whole life to become
acquainted with human nature. An account of the hundreds of episodes showing
the lengths to which mankind will go in an effort to put the railroads under
obligations, in the experience of the Captain alone, would make a salable
volume or two and cover a field not yet touched by the pen of an author.
The life of Captain Williams has been so closely given to his employers
that he has not been a positive factor in his home affairs. He has ever been
a strong Democrat and has always been capable of giving a reason for the
faith that is in him, but has lived to see but one of his school of politics
fill the presidency since the war. He remembers the campaign of 1840, and
the campaign slogans of each party, and an appeal to his generous fund of
political information brings out many incidents of the methods used and the
leading characters engaged in our ante-bellum battles for the presidency.
Captain Williams was married in Covington, Kentucky, in 1863, to
Miss Rachel Williams, his own cousin, who died in Cairo in 1904. Two
daughters were born of this union; Mary Louise, who passed away here May 9,
1911, leaving her father as the last of his family; and Caroline Or 'Lea,
who died in childhood. The Captain is a Master Mason and a consistent member
of the Episcopal church.
In front of his office at the Mobile & Ohio
station in Cairo there is a small park covered with stately shade trees
planted by himself more than twenty-five years ago, and upon one corner of
this triangular plot stands "Captain Billy Williams," a cannon, a gift to
the city from the president of the Mobile & Ohio Railway Company, and from
the old Confederate Fort Morgan, at Mobile, from whence it was transported
and found a final resting place upon an emplacement erected at the expense
of Captain Williams and his friend, Colonel W. Butler Duncan, of New York
City, President of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad Company.
Extracted 15 Jan 2018 by Norma Hass from 1912 History of Southern Illinois, Volume 2, pages 680-681.
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