SAM WILLIAMS
(NO RELATION TO MR. CAD)
[Sam Houston Williams]
That Old Uncle Sam Williams came from Bell County. He was once well to
do, especially in land holdings, owning a big track across the river and
just up from the old Stephenville bridge. But he drank it up. He was quite
a fellow and had been a good athlete. Once Charlie Day, when the old man
was staggering drunk, bet him a twenty dollar gold piece that he could out
jump him.
The old man took some weights, let Charlie do the first jump, out in
the back alley, and then beat him a foot or two. Day had thought he was
too drunk to jump. Charlie Day lived at Dublin a long time, running a
saloon.
(As I recall Mr. Day later ran a meat market for a time in Hamilton. I
knew his three girls well, who were children of his last wife, lived
across the street from us. Addie Emmett was telling me this story. Mr. Day
was really on his death bed. He and another boy were detailed to set up
with him one night. Mr. Day said, you boys look tired, get in the bed and
sleep. He got up and sat in a rocking chair reading a paper - till Mrs.
Day came in and flushed the boys out.)
(When old I can remember when Uncle Sam, and that was what we called
him, sometimes cut wood for us, before I was big enough to do it. A quiet,
kindly old man. His son Ben became a prominent business man, owning a gin,
a very courteous man. [Ben Franklin Williams, Sr.
married Cordelia Nellie "Cordy" Smith on 13 August, 1905 in
Hamilton.] His son "Tip" was sort of raised on the
streets of Hamilton in the Nineties. Uncle Sam had known General Sterling
Price somewhere, and that was this boys name. He taught school at
Jonesboro in 1902, went on off and when he retired he was Professor of
Philosophy in Wake Forest University in Chicago, high up in his field,
taught Morbid Psychology.) [Sterling Price
"Tip" Williams, Ph. D. was a son of Sam Houston Williams and
Louise Cartwright. Dr. Williams was buried in the Gentrys Mill
Cemetery in 1974.--Elreeta Weathers]
(He and Mrs. Williams came back here and retired in the old family
home. He told me he wanted to "evaluate" his early career. He at
first told some good stories, and I would drive him over the country.
There was rough shod sort of lawyer, named Grogan, judging from a letter
found in my father’s files. One Saturday night Grogan stopped
"Tip" over on the north side, and said, "Young man, you
will hang before you are twenty-one." He was still sorta sore about
it and I don’t blame him. On the street car going to work in Chicago he
would hear tycoon talked about the stock market, got interested, and
shrewdly had accumulated quite a lot himself. Told me it didn’t seem
right for a philosopher to be a financier. He passed on several years ago,
and is buried out at the Gentry’s Mill
Cemetery, near where he used to
work.)
(At one time he was going to school at old Polytechnic, a Methodist
college at Fort Worth. He told me of a big Germanic sort of man who came
there during the term, and helped him with his luggage. He was a strange
fellow, read exotic poetry, and if he got mad growled like an animal,
showing his "molars." He did not know, of course, at the time
that the had murdered his wife and was a fugitive. The small college was
an excellent hide-out. Many years later a man broke into the J. P. Moran
residence in New York during World War One, and made an aborted attempt to
stab him to death. I recall the incident. Supposedly, because his firm had
made loans to Britain
In Chicago newspaper correspondents were looking up Dr. Williams. I don’t
know how they knew of his acquaintance with this man, whose name I can’t
recall. Fortunately, nothing further was necessary, inasmuch as the man
hanged himself in jail. On one occasion Mr. Williams Dr. Williams and I
went by to see Stanley Walker on his old family farm in Lampasas County.
He had been the great city editor of the New York Herald-Tribune. I
got .Mr. Williams to tell him the story. Of course, he was well acquainted
with this incident in New York.)
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CHESLEY'S HAMILTON COUNTY INTERVIEWS
BY
HERVEY EDGAR CHESLEY, JR.
Born: 21 November, 1894
Died: 17 July, 1979