Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 - Echoes in Action

Echo 19 - From the Sandhills to Sierra Leone: Dr. John Taylor Williams

In March 1898, readers of The Star of Zion, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, opened its pages to find the portrait of a distinguished North Carolina physician.

Beneath the portrait appeared his name:

DR. JOHN T. WILLIAMS

And above his story:

“Consul To Sierra Leone, Africa—Successful Physician.”

By then, Dr. John Taylor Williams was a successful Charlotte physician, businessman, civic leader, and political figure. President William McKinley had nominated him to represent the United States in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

It was an extraordinary destination for a life that had begun nearly forty years earlier in the Sandhills of North Carolina.

A Child of the Sandhills

John Taylor Williams was born May 1, 1859, to Peter Williams and Flora Ann McKay Williams, free Black parents living in northern Cumberland County.

The 1898 Star of Zion profile described his birthplace as “in the northern part of Cumberland County in Little River township about 18 miles from Fayetteville.” Little River Township did not yet exist as a political subdivision when Williams was born; the newspaper was using the later township designation to identify the area of his birth.

His father, Peter, was described as a lumberman and veterinary surgeon. His mother, Flora Ann, was the daughter of Alexander and Maria McKay.

Flora gave her son one of his earliest gifts.

She taught him to read.

When John was about six years old, she began teaching him his letters. In 1867, the family moved to Harnett County. According to the account published during Williams's lifetime, Peter arranged for a white widow to teach his children, compensating her through work on her farm.

John took to books.

He mastered Webster's blue-back speller, became a constant reader, and by sixteen had reportedly worked his way through his mother's collection of memoirs, histories and biographies.

Then the student became the teacher.

Williams passed a teacher's examination at sixteen and began teaching private school. He later taught his first public school in Lillington.

At eighteen, he entered the State Normal School in Fayetteville and graduated three years later at the head of his class.

The 1880 United States Census captures him during this period of his life. Back home in Barbecue Township, Harnett County, John Williams was living with his mother and brothers.

His occupation was simply:

School Teacher.

Nothing on that census page hinted at just how far the young teacher would travel.

From the Classroom to Medicine

Williams continued teaching in North Carolina, including positions in Union County and Southport. By 1882, he had been employed in Charlotte as assistant principal of the city's colored graded school.

But education was leading him toward another profession.

Williams entered Leonard Medical College, the medical department of Shaw University in Raleigh. On March 30, 1886, he graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine.

That same year, Williams and fellow Black physicians M. T. Pope and L. A. Scruggs presented themselves before the North Carolina State Board of Medical Examiners at New Bern. Williams passed the examination and received his license to practice medicine.

On July 22, 1886, Dr. Williams arrived in Charlotte and began his medical practice.

He prospered.

For five years, according to the Star of Zion, Williams served as surgeon in charge of Union Hospital, an institution established for the treatment of Black patients.

But medicine was only one part of his increasingly remarkable public life.

In 1887, Governor Alfred Moore Scales commissioned him surgeon captain of the First Battalion of the North Carolina State Guards.

In 1888, Charlotte voters elected Williams a city alderman. He was later reelected and served on committees concerned with sanitation, education, public buildings and grounds, and other municipal matters.

He also entered business. For several years, Williams served as president of the Queen City Drug Store Company and acquired property in Charlotte.

The young schoolteacher from Barbecue Township had become a physician, military officer, businessman and elected public official.

And there was another institution that had been part of his life since his youth: the church.

A Life of Faith and Service

Williams grew up in a household shaped by two Christian traditions. His father was Presbyterian and his mother Methodist.

At thirteen, John joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

His involvement went far beyond church attendance. Williams eventually held the positions available to a layman and represented his denomination at quarterly, district and annual conferences. In 1892, he represented the Western North Carolina Conference at the AME Zion General Conference in Pittsburgh.

His influence within the denomination continued even as his professional career expanded.

Years later, a 1904 issue of The Star of Zion credited Williams and Rev. John F. Moreland as the “projectors” of a plan for a general fund assessment on local AME Zion churches—another indication that Williams's talents extended into institutional and financial affairs.

But by then, Williams had already crossed an ocean.

“Consul to Sierra Leone"

By the late 1890s, Williams was also active in Republican politics in western North Carolina.

His abilities and connections eventually brought his name to the attention of the administration of President William McKinley.

Williams was selected for diplomatic service in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

When The Star of Zion profiled him on March 3, 1898, his nomination was still part of the story. The newspaper described his accomplishments and noted that prominent banking, business and manufacturing interests in Charlotte had supported his appointment.

Then, apparently as the newspaper was preparing for publication, came an update:

“LATER: Since writing the above Dr. Williams has been confirmed as consul to Sierra Leone and will start for his post in a few days.”

Another North Carolina newspaper soon carried the news.

On March 30, 1898, The North Carolinian published a recurring column bearing a title unmistakably of its era:

“OUR COLORED PEOPLE.”

The column carried notices concerning Black North Carolinians—the activities of churches, schools, organizations, families and individuals.

Tucked among them was an announcement that must have caused more than a few readers to stop:

“The appointment of Dr. John Taylor Williams, of Charlotte, this State, as Consul to Sierra Leone, Africa, has been confirmed by the Senate.”

Consider the distance traveled.

In 1880, the census taker had found John Taylor Williams in Barbecue Township and written beside his name:

School Teacher.

Eighteen years later, the United States Senate had confirmed him to represent his country in Africa.

An Invitation from Freetown

By the fall of 1898, Dr. Williams was in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

And one newspaper account gives us an unusually intimate glimpse of his life there.

On October 2, 1898, the Charlotte Daily Observer reported that Silas Washington had received an invitation from Williams to a banquet in Freetown given by St. George's Lodge No. 4094 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows.

Among the specially recognized guests was:

“Dr. John Taylor Williams, M.D., consul for the United States of America.”

The newspaper even printed the menu.

There was ox-tail soup and barracouta with oyster sauce. Mutton cutlets with green peas. Chicken and ham pie. Roast turkey and boiled ham. Plum pudding, mince pies, jellies, blanc mange and Queen's cake. Hock, champagne and dessert wines accompanied the meal.

It is a small detail.

But sometimes the smallest details bring the past closest.

For a moment, Williams is no longer merely a name on a census page or an appointment announced in a newspaper.

We can imagine the room.

The tables.

The guests.

And somewhere among them, thousands of miles from the North Carolina Sandhills, sat Dr. John Taylor Williams.

Yet even there, the newspaper identified another of his affiliations:

North State Lodge No. 3238, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Across the Atlantic, home still followed him.

Remembered—But Not Always Correctly

Williams's remarkable rise was remembered in Harnett County, although over time portions of the story became distorted.

A later local history, They Passed This Way, remembered the young Williams studying books while other workers socialized after their day's labor. It remembered that he saved money, attended medical school, established a successful practice in Charlotte and eventually received an important federal appointment.

But then the story went astray.

The book claimed Williams had been appointed a “minister to Liberia” and even preserved an account in which he was remembered as having become a minister who was “preaching over in a church called Liberia.”

Contemporary records tell us otherwise.

John Taylor Williams was a physician, not a minister of the gospel.

And the country was not Liberia.

He was appointed United States consul to Sierra Leone.

The mistake is a reminder of something every family and community historian eventually learns: memory can preserve a story while changing its details.

That is why the records matter.

An Echo Worth Revisiting

Years ago, the Sandhills Family Heritage Association also preserved the story of Dr. John Taylor Williams and his connection to the Spout Springs area.

That early account kept his name before another generation.

Now census schedules, marriage records, newspapers and other historical sources allow us to return to his story and see it with greater clarity.

And there is much more.

There is more to learn about Peter and Flora Ann McKay Williams, the free Black couple who raised a large family in the Sandhills and placed such importance on educating their children.

There is Williams's long relationship with the AME Zion Church.

There are his years in Sierra Leone.

There is the family he created with his wife Jennie E. Harris Williams, herself an educated woman and graduate of Scotia Seminary and Livingstone College.

And there is their daughter, Aurelia Williams, who carried the family's educational tradition into another generation, becoming a public-school teacher of French and English in Charlotte.

The story that began with Flora teaching a little boy his letters did not end with him.

Neither did Dr. Williams's story end when he returned from Africa.

There were more years of medicine, business, community leadership and service before his death on June 8, 1924. He was laid to rest in Charlotte's Ninth Street Pinewood Cemetery.

But those are stories for another day.

For now, remember the young man the census taker found in Barbecue Township in 1880.

John Williams.

School Teacher.

Remember the mother who had first placed books before him.

Remember the father who found a way for his children to be taught.

And then remember the words North Carolinians would read eighteen years later:

Dr. John Taylor Williams had been confirmed as United States Consul to Sierra Leone.

From northern Cumberland County to Harnett County.

From the classroom to the medical school.

From Barbecue Township to Charlotte.

From Charlotte to Freetown.

The Sandhills had sent one of its sons into the world.

And we have only begun to tell his story.

More of the story of Dr. John Taylor Williams, his family, and the communities that shaped them will be included in a future volume of Echoes from the Sandhills.

Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 - Echoes in Action

Echo 18 - An August Day in Manchester, 1875

Manchester, Cumberland County, North Carolina — August 28, 1875

Imagine that it is a Saturday morning in late August 1875.

Only ten years have passed since the end of the Civil War and emancipation. Freedom is not a distant chapter in a history book. It is recent memory.

We are in Manchester, in the part of Cumberland County now known as Spring Lake. Ministers and representatives from A.M.E. Zion churches and circuits across the district have gathered at Bethel A.M.E. Zion Church for their District Conference.

We know something of what happened that day because A. W. Marsh was there to report the proceedings to The Educator. His account appeared in the newspaper on September 4, 1875.

For a few moments, his words allow us to walk through the doors of Bethel and join them.

The Morning Begins

Elder A. M. Barrett is presiding.

The conference opens with the reading of the 115th Psalm. Then those gathered join in singing the hymn “Brethren in Christ.” Elder D. Williams follows with prayer.

With worship concluded, the business of the conference begins.

James D. McKay is elected recording secretary, with W. B. Minter as his assistant. A. W. Marsh is selected as reporter to The Educator.

Then Elder Barrett rises to give his opening address.

The newspaper tells us that his remarks “abounded with wholesome advice” and were delivered in such an interesting manner that those gathered listened with “the most earnest attention.”

Barrett is happy to be back among them. He speaks of the joy he feels at being permitted once again to visit and labor in the district after an absence of a year. He recalls the early history of the A.M.E. Zion Church in New York and urges the members of the conference to conduct their business “in peace and harmony.”

Then he shares a number that is easy to pass over:

2,758 miles.

That is how far Elder Barrett reports traveling throughout his district since the Annual Conference.

In 1875.

Those miles remind us that the churches represented at Bethel were not isolated congregations. They were part of an organized connection of churches, ministers, circuits and communities spread across a wide area—and maintaining that connection required someone to travel those roads.

Then They Got Down to Business

The conference next examines the character of the local preachers.

The newspaper reports simply that all passed except one.

Then Elder Barrett announces the committees.

And this is where we should linger, because the newspaper preserved something more valuable than a description of the meeting.

It preserved names.

On Rules: A. W. Marsh, William McLean, William Thigpen, Rev. Henry Williams and Rev. R. C. Collins.

On Examination of Candidates to the Annual Conference: Rev. Henry Williams, Rev. R. C. Collins, Rev. John Murchison, Rev. D. Williams, W. T. Jones and Isham Williams.

On Missions: William B. McLean, T. McNeill, A. Manners, William Goldston, Elder D. Williams and R. C. Collins.

On the State of the Church: A. W. Marsh, Bolston Rieves, James Waddell, E. M. Cole, Anthony Wadworth, Thomas Lucas, R. C. Collins, Henry Williams, W. T. Jones, Joseph Jordan, A. Williams, H. McDonald, Peter Cameron and J. Cameron.

Read those names slowly.

McKay. Minter. Marsh. McLean. Thigpen. Williams. Collins. Murchison. Jones. McNeill. Manners. Goldston. Rieves. Waddell. Cole. Wadworth. Lucas. Jordan. McDonald. Cameron.

Perhaps one is familiar.

Perhaps it is a name carried by a family in the Sandhills today. Perhaps one appears in an old family Bible, a census, a deed, a church record or on a weathered cemetery stone.

That is one of the gifts of these old newspapers. They do not merely tell us that something happened.

They tell us who was in the room.

Noon in Manchester

Eventually, the morning's work comes to an end.

The conference adjourns until 2:00 p.m.

We are not told what happened during that break. But imagine Manchester on an August afternoon—the heat, the conversations outside Bethel, people greeting those they had not seen for some time, and delegates discussing the business still ahead.

Then two o'clock arrives.

They return.

The Afternoon Session

Elder Barrett again takes the chair.

Deacon G. W. Williams opens the afternoon exercises with reading, singing and prayer.

There is no need for another roll call.

The minutes of the morning session are read aloud. Corrections are made. Then the conference approves them.

Next comes the statistical report.

Letters are read from the different circuits, and their reports are presented. The newspaper notes that all reports are given except the report from the Carthage Circuit.

That small reference gives us another glimpse of the geographic reach represented inside Bethel that day. Manchester is the meeting place, but the business being conducted reaches beyond Manchester.

Finally, the statistical reports are finished.

And after a morning of worship, speeches, examinations, committee appointments, minutes, letters and reports, the delegates do something wonderfully ordinary.

They stop.

For ten minutes.

The newspaper tells us that everyone “retired for ten minutes for refreshments.”

For just a moment, it is easy to imagine the scene.

The formal proceedings give way to conversation. Perhaps someone steps outside. Someone finds a drink. Ministers and delegates catch one another for a quick word before returning to their seats.

Ten minutes later, the conference resumes.

The Committee on the State of the Church presents its report.

And then, just when we want to know what they said, our newspaper account ends:

“Concluded next week.”

But Remember the Year: 1875

It would be easy to see this as nothing more than the routine proceedings of an old church conference.

But the year changes how we should read it.

1875.

Only ten years after freedom.

Some of the people gathered inside Bethel that day had lived through slavery. Others had been born into a world in which their parents, relatives and neighbors could be held as property.

Now here they were.

Ministers and laymen representing A.M.E. Zion churches and circuits across the district had come together in Manchester to conduct the business of their denomination.

They elected their officers.

They examined their preachers.

They considered candidates for Annual Conference.

They appointed committees on rules, missions and the state of the church.

They received reports from their circuits.

They read their minutes, corrected them and approved them.

And they made sure that someone reported what they had done to the Black press.

That last act is why we can return to Manchester today.

For a Moment, We Were There

One hundred and fifty-one years separate us from that August Saturday at Bethel.

Yet an old newspaper has shortened the distance.

We know what scripture opened the meeting.

We know what hymn they sang.

We know who prayed.

We know who presided.

We know Elder Barrett had traveled 2,758 miles.

We know the names of men entrusted with the work of the conference.

We know Carthage had not submitted its report.

We even know they stopped for ten minutes to get refreshments.

These are small details.

But small details are often what make people from the past human again.

So today, we are not looking at 1875 from a distance.

For just a little while, we have taken a seat inside Bethel A.M.E. Zion Church in Manchester.

We have listened.

We have watched.

And, most importantly, we have called their names.

Source: “May God bless the Camp Meetings,” The Educator, September 4, 1875. Report dated Manchester, Cumberland County, North Carolina, August 28, 1875.

Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 - Echoes in Action

Echo 17  — When the Map Changed Around Them

When we search for our ancestors, we tend to think of place as something fixed.

A person lived in Cumberland County.

Another lived in Harnett County.

Another lived in Moore County.

But the geography recorded beside our ancestors' names was not nearly so permanent.

County boundaries changed. New counties were created. Townships were divided and renamed. A family could appear to have moved from one place to another between census years when, in fact, they may have remained on the same land while the name of the place changed around them.

That is why the old townships of the Sandhills matter.

A New Way of Dividing the Counties

Following North Carolina's 1868 Constitution, counties were divided into townships. These smaller geographic units became important ways of identifying communities and administering local government.

Their creation coincided with an especially important moment in African American history.

The 1870 census was the first federal census after emancipation to enumerate formerly enslaved people by name as members of their own households.

For many of our ancestors, therefore, those early township names are among the first geographic markers we have for them as free people.

In Cumberland County, the post-1868 townships included Babers, Black River, Carvers Creek, Cedar Creek, Cross Creek, Flea Hill, Gray's Creek, Manchester, Pearces Mill, Rockfish, and Seventy-First.

In Harnett County, they included Averasboro, Barbecue, Black River, Buckhorn, Grove, Hectors Creek, Johnsonville, Lillington, Neills Creek, Stewart's Creek, and Upper Little River.

And in Moore County, they included Ben Salem, Carthage, Crains Creek, Deep River, Greenwood, McNeill, Mineral Springs, Pocket, Ritters, and Sheffields.

But those lists are only a snapshot.

The township map continued to change.

When Barbecue Became Anderson Creek

Harnett County provides a particularly good example.

Anderson Creek Township does not appear among the county's original post-1868 townships. 

It was established later, in part from territory that had been included in Barbecue Township.

That distinction becomes very real when we look at the census.

My own ancestors appear in Barbecue Township in the 1870 census. Ten years later, in 1880, they appear in Anderson Creek Township.

At first glance, that could suggest that the family moved.

But the records raise another possibility—and an important lesson for family historians.

The people may have stayed put. The township changed.

Sometime between those two censuses, Anderson Creek Township came into existence, incorporating at least part of what had previously been Barbecue Township. So an ancestor whose residence was recorded as Barbecue in 1870 could later be recorded in Anderson Creek without packing a wagon, selling a piece of land, or moving a household.

The boundary crossed them.

That is precisely why we have to read historical records using the geography of their time, not ours.

The Map Kept Evolving

Anderson Creek was not the only later addition.

Harnett County would also gain Duke Township, which was later renamed Erwin.

Moore County's township structure changed as well, with Pinehurst and Sandhills established later.

These changes are more than interesting bits of local history. They can determine where we look for an ancestor.

If we search only for a place name we recognize today, we may miss records created when that same piece of land belonged to another township.

And sometimes the change was even larger than a township boundary.

Where Is Lee County?

There is another name noticeably missing from our original post-1868 township lists:

Lee County.

That is because Lee County did not exist.

It was created in 1907 from portions of Moore and Chatham counties.

So someone living in what is now Lee County could not have been recorded as a resident of Lee County in the 1870, 1880, or 1900 federal census.

If we are looking for that person, we have to look at the map that existed then.

A family living on land that later became part of Lee County might appear in an earlier record under Moore County or Chatham County.

Again:

The family may not have moved. The boundary did.

Townships Can Help Us Find the Community

For African American genealogy, these distinctions can be particularly valuable.

The 1870 census is often treated as a starting line because it is the first census in which formerly enslaved people generally appear by name.

But simply finding an ancestor in 1870 is not the end of the search.

Look at the township.

Then look at the people living around them.

Who were their neighbors?

Which surnames appear repeatedly?

Where were the nearby churches?

Where were the cemeteries?

Who owned land nearby?

Which white families had been enslavers in that same area before emancipation?

Where do those Black families appear in 1880?

And if the township name changes between censuses, find out whether the family moved—or whether the township boundary moved instead.

That question can completely change the direction of the research.

Names That Still Speak

Some of the old township names remain familiar across the Sandhills:

Carvers Creek.

Seventy-First.

Barbecue.

Upper Little River.

Deep River.

Greenwood.

Anderson Creek.

Others, such as Flea Hill, Pocket, Hectors Creek, and Sheffields, may be less familiar today.

But on an old census page, each one is a clue.

A township takes us from a county covering hundreds of square miles and places our ancestors in a much smaller landscape—a landscape of farms, creeks, roads, churches, schools, cemeteries, and neighboring families.

And once we begin comparing those landscapes across time, something else becomes apparent.

Maps record history, too.

A line drawn across a county could give a community a new name. A new township could appear between one census and the next. In 1907, an entirely new county called Lee could emerge from land that generations had known as Moore or Chatham.

Our ancestors lived through all of those changes.

So when we find someone in Barbecue Township in 1870 and Anderson Creek Township in 1880, we should resist the temptation to immediately send them down the road.

First, we ask what every good family historian eventually learns to ask:

Did my ancestors move—or did the map?

Sometimes, the answer is the map.

And understanding that difference can help us find the people we thought we had lost.