My Genealogy Hound

S. D. Williams was born at Mooresburg, Hawkins Co., Tenn., January 25, 1823, and is the son of George and Sallie (Moore) Williams. The father’s native county is Hawkins County, Tenn., and he was the son of John Williams, a Virginian by birth, and one of the early pioneer settlers of East Tennessee, and who was of Welsh descent, and a plain and practical farmer, and a sober, industrious citizen, and a soldier in the war of 1812. The father of our subject was a farmer, and noted as a man of deep intellect, reserved, firm and practical. He was a farmer by vocation, and as such was practical and successful, and died at his home in Hawkins County in 1855, at the age of fifty-six or fifty-seven years. In 1817 he married the mother of our subject. She was a native of Surry County, N.C., and was a woman of most desirable domestic qualities, a devoted wife, a kind and affectionate mother, and devout Christian. Unto her were born fourteen children, of whom our subject is the fifth. He was reared on the farm, and received a limited education in the neighboring schools of his father’s home, and served his father on the farm till he reached his majority, and then, having concluded his education non-sufficient, entered school in Holston College, New Market, Tenn., and attended one session. It was while here at school he met and formed an acquaintance with Miss Mary P. Reese, the second daughter of Dr. Joseph B. M. Reese, of East Tennessee. This lady was a teacher in a female seminary at New Market at this time, and her acquaintance with our subject resulted in her becoming his wife, August 20, 1844, when our subject was in his twenty-second year. She was a highly educated woman in classics, having received a classical education at the female school of Jonesboro, Tenn. She was well conversant with general literature, and was noted for sincerity and devotion. She was the mother of eleven children, eight of whom have become useful men and women. This faithful wife and devoted mother died April 22, 1874, at Los Angeles, Cal., at the age of fifty years. She lies buried in Los Angeles cemetery. February 2, 1875, he married for a second wife, Mary Eva Bradford, daughter of Eunich and Eva Bradford, of Montgomery County, Va. Our subject’s life occupation has been farming and trading in and raising of stock. He has followed his occupation for the most part in East Tennessee with the exception of four years, during which time he was growing cotton in the State of Mississippi, and three years at Danville, Ky., stock raising. He has been a successful man in his many undertakings, sustaining, however, a heavy loss of property during the civil war; nevertheless, he has outlived the embarrassment, and is now a prosperous and practical farmer of Jefferson County, and besides being a man of a broad experience and observation, he is a man well conversant, with judicial and political history. He is not a man who has aspired to office, yet fills what is regarded with much esteem by those know him. He is a charitable man, and gives much to religion and education and to all beneficial enterprises. He has long been a member and elder in the Presbyterian Church, and for a considerable time has been a Mason. He is now in his sixty-fifth year and is still an active man physically and mentally.