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.