Lewis² D. Williams

Born December 15, 1826, Wayne County, New York; died August 14, 1915, in Hastings, Michigan; married Mary Ostrom, who died in 1876; then married Rosette A. Axtell April 30, 1879.

During the Civil War, Lewis enlisted in the 138^th New York Infantry, Company D, on August 30, 1962, as a private. He didn't stay one long. The regiment, like many others, had no cadre of experienced soldiers, so the older men who joined up were made into NCOs. By September 12 he was a corporal, a duty sergeant on the 21st, and first sergeant the next June. By this time the regiment was renamed the 9^th Regiment NY Heavy Artillery and was put in the defenses of Washington. The Capitol had to be defended, but it was never threatened and this became cushy garrison duty. Veterans, with the universal contempt of combat troops for the rear echelon, derisively called them "band-box soldiers."

That changed in the spring of 1864, when Grant hurled the Army of the Potomac at Richmond. Casualties were heavy, and the garrison troops were hauled out of Washington to do some real fighting. The 9^th came down for the battle of North Anna, and fought through the beginning of the siege of Petersburg. Lewis was commissioned a first lieutenant just before this.

Though now far from Washington he was still involved in its defense. Lee had sent Jubal Early to defend the Shenandoah Valley, and he saw an opportunity for a raid on the now unprotected Capitol. Early began marching through Maryland, and when he was noticed he was closer to Washington than Grant. The Federal authorities panicked, and Union forces were quickly sent north. They couldn't make it in time, so the 9^th was rushed into Maryland as part of a small delaying force, and the two armies met at the battle of the Monocacy (southeast of Frederick, Maryland) on July 9. The outnumbered Union forces were pushed off the field, but they delayed Early long enough for reinforcements to arrive in Washington. Here Lewis lead his company in battle, and was hit in the right hip by a Minié ball.

Lewis survived, but was discharged for medical reasons in November 1864. The discharge didn't stick; like many Union wounded he joined the Veteran's Reserve Corps as a second lieutenant. This was not a fighting job, but it allowed able-bodied soldiers to be freed for more physical duties. He was honorably discharged in July 1866.

After the war he joined the rest of his family in Michigan, and spent the rest of his life in Ostego, in Allegan County. He earned his living making furniture and running machinery.

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John³ James Williams

Born June 15, 1840, Lyons, New York; died May 14, 1902, Anna, Illinois; married Sarah Ellen Vanderburg, November 1863, Lyons, New York; divorced April 16, 1885, at Ellsworth, Kansas; married Rosalie Teachout, December 10, 1885, Lyons, New York.

When the Civil War started, John, a stone cutter, enlisted in the 160^th New York Infantry on August 25, 1862, as a corporal, and soon found himself in Louisiana as part of the Federal occupation of New Orleans. This was not pleasant duty, and he was often sick, and in January he was admitted to the hospital. It seems he was now missing the ends of the index and middle fingers of his right hand, shot off, while on guard duty, by the "accidental discharge" of his rifle.

This was a common self-inflicted wound that many used to get out of the service, but this winter it was nearly epidemic, so the Army denied it as a reason for discharge. John was then made the company clerk in March, 1963, after he had healed.

In September John was promoted to second lieutenant in Company K, 17^th US Colored Infantry. The regiment spent most of its time around Memphis, and was used primarily as a source of labor. He was discharged in January, 1864.

John wandered around a lot during his remaining years. He lived in several towns in northern and western New York, then moved to Hastings, Michigan, where the rest of his family was. Soon after he was in Battle Creek. In 1885 he was in Ellsworth, Kansas, where he is a dealer in marble and granite. Later he was in West Plains, in the Missouri Ozarks.

He ended up in Anna, Illinois, where Rosalie died in April, 1902, and a couple weeks later he was declared insane. He died the next month, as much from grief as old age. He was buried by the local chapter of the GAR.

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George³ W. Williams, Jr.

Born February 25, 1842, Lyons, New York; died January 19, 1909, Buffalo, New York. Married Mary Elizabeth Clute, Sodus Ridge, New York, in March or April of 1865; Mary died in May, 1883, and George married Anna Wood on November 27, 1883, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

George enlisted in the 27^th New York Infantry, Company B, on May 21, 1861, soon after the Civil War started, and was mustered out when the regiment was disbanded on May 31, 1863. Nothing much seems to have happened, though his records contain an incomplete and undated Memorandum From Prisoner of War Records.

In November, George re-enlisted, this time in the 22^nd New York Cavalry, as a sergeant in Company H. This was more interesting. He fell (likely off a horse) and injured his foot, and spent the rest of the war in and out of hospitals. He was apparently a malingerer. On July 1, 1864, he was reduced to the rank of private, and desertion charges were filed, but they were later removed because the paperwork was lost. In May 1865 George was transferred to the Veteran Volunteers, and he served as a clerk in the office of the Quartermaster General until he was discharged in April 1866.

He moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he lived many years, and later moved to Buffalo, New York. His business card, with an 1896 date, shows him a dealer in various types of brick. His death certificate describes him as a civil engineer.

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Alexander³ Bigelow Williams 2^nd

Born November 19, 1844, Wayne County, New York; died September 17, 1864, Charleston, South Carolina.

Alexander (named after his uncle the politician) first helped his mother by keeping the books in her ice cream parlor, but the Civil War changed that, as it did so many things. He enlisted in the 111^th NY Infantry, Company D, August 6, 1862. The regiment was shipped down the Hudson, then down the coast to the Potomac, where they were sent overland to Harper's Ferry. This was bad timing. Soon after they settled into camp, Lee began his Maryland campaign, and Stonewall Jackson swooped up and captured the garrison as a preliminary to the battle of Antietam. The regiment, along with most of those there, had no training at all, not even target practice. They could not have put up a fight even if they were not in a bad tactical position.

As was the custom, the captured troops were paroled, meaning they were released back to the Union, but couldn't fight or even train until they were exchanged for paroled Confederate troops. They began marching through Maryland, a pleasant trip in good weather, with the local people offerring food and drink when they marched through a town. From Baltimore they took a train west, either sleeping under the seats, when it was cold, or riding on top of the car, when it was warm. In late September they arrived at Camp Douglas, a prison camp outside of Chicago, where they spent a miserable two months.

Eventually the regiment was exchanged, and they were stationed at Centerville, Virginia, on the edge of the Manassas battlefield. They spent most of their time on picket duty, and in receiving the training they should have had much earlier. And all this time they suffered under the unjustified taint of being "Harper's Ferry Cowards."

So there they sat, hearing only rumors of the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and the closest they came to combat were midnight alarms caused by Mosby's raids. Then Lee came north again.

Hooker tried to follow, but Lee kept the passes blocked and Hooker mystified. Hooker screamed for reinforcements, but the only ones available were guarding Washington, the ones no one would release for fear of weakening the Capitol's defenses. Eventually they freed up some brigades, and the 111^th headed north. They were now in the Third Brigade, Third Division, II Corps, of the Army of the Potomac.

This was their first march on campaign, and it was a rough one. The regiment shed stragglers continuously. Some would get to tired to march any more, and would fall out by the roadside. Some could not recover, and a few died of exhaustion and exposure, but most would slog on and catch up during the night, determined to show the rest of the Army that they were as good as the veterans. The march of June 29 covered thirty miles. Alexander straggled this day, but after a few hours rest came on and caught up just before the regiment left camp again. Hard rain the next day kept them from moving more than two miles. The 111^th was now just short of the Mason-Dixon line.

The regiment had high morale, in spite of the hard marching and the men were eager for battle, to wipe out the reputation of cowardice. But in even with the battle now raging at Gettysburg they moved only a few miles on July 1. The next day they rose early and marched north, getting to the battlefield in the afternoon. Now there was no time for planning, or even speeches, and they were immediately thrown in to stop the penultimate Confederate charge at the Peach Orchard. They succeeded, but only barely, and with much hard fighting. The regiment went into battle with 390 men, and lost 249 casualties that day. No one would call them cowards again.

Their fight wasn't over. Though badly shot up, the regiment was ordered to Cemetery Ridge, a few hundred yards north of a clump of trees that would shortly be known as The Copse. They lay there all night in line of battle. The morning brought the sounds of fighting to them, but none came their way, and they rested as well as they could. Then, in the two hours around noon, a deep silence came upon the battlefield, a quiet so profound that everyone would remember and remark on it for years later.

It was the calm before the tsunami, and just as inevitably, it was broken. Two spaced cannon were fired from the Confederate line, and on that signal the rest of their artillery opened up on the center of the Union line. More guns were firing now, 150 or more, more than had ever been used in one cannonade, and if most of the shot went over the ridge, enough were aimed well enough to hit front line. Amid this, the 111^th had to stand up and march a short distance to a new position.

The cannonading lasted two hours, and it tapered off much more slowly than it began. The prelude was over. Out of the woods came the divisions of Pickett and Pettigrew, and they formed up and began their march to doom and glory. No one in the 111^tn, between the shelling and the intimidating sight of so many men coming against them, thought they would hold. But the regiments that Longstreet had aimed at them were stopped by Union artillery and a lone regiment accidentally left out ahead of the line. With no one facing them the regiment was ordered out in front, and they wheeled around to fire at the flanks of the advancing Confederates, who never made it to the Union lines. The Confederates retreated, those that weren't hit or captured, and the battle of Gettysburg was over.

July 4^th was not time for celebration. The regiment could only rest and bury its dead, while putting up with sniper fire that nearly hit Alexander. They were too weak to move. Company D went into the battle with forty-five men, and now had only eleven effectives. They would lose a few more to the snipers.

For the next few months the Army of the Potomac chased Lee, never catching him, but getting in a lot of marching. The pursuit -- too slow, said many who weren't there -- went through western Maryland, where Alexander would get nostalgic visiting his old camp grounds around Harper's Ferry.

Maneuvers continued into the fall, when in October Lee saw the opportunity of inflicting a "Third Manassas" on the Federals, but Mead was neither McDowell nor Pope, and kept his men together. Instead, it was the Union forces who defeated the Confederates, on October 14, in a short, sharp fight at Bristoe Station. It was a small battle, as battles went in Virginia, but the defeat was decisive. And Alexander was wounded, grazed by a Minié ball over the right ear.

This "Dip in my Head" wasn't severe. Alexander had to walk most of the way to the hospital in Alexandria. He survived the hospitalization, and returned to the regiment in December, after a furlough for recuperation.

The new year began much like the old one, in camp, doing picket duty in northern Virginia. In April Alexander was promoted to corporal, and in June to sergeant. By now the regiment was heavily involved in the horrific battles of Grant's campaign against Lee, beginning with the battle of the Wilderness.

Eventually, the army reached Petersburg, but the initial assaults were slow, and were poorly supported. One of these, on June 22, left Alexander behind as a prisoner. He was held in Richmond for a week, then was shipped off to Lynchburg, and from there to South Carolina, where he, and other prisoners, were held at the "race course."

It had no formal name. The prisoners, on their way to the deep South, were held there to wait for transportation. As with many things temporary, it became all too permanent. By now Federal raids had made a mess of the railroads in the Confederacy, tearing up the rails and destroying the rolling stock. What capacity was left was needed for transferring things more important than prisoners, so they stayed.

The district commander tried to get the prisoners moved out. They were a drain on his resources, and he feared that so many men who had never been exposed to yellow fever would exacerbate the epidemic that he saw coming. But the epidemic came, and it hit the prisoners hard.

On September 17, Alexander died of the disease. He never knew that he has been given a commission as a second lieutenant.

Emma³ Louise Williams

Born October 12, 1848, Lyons, New York; died January 20, 1926, Hastings, Michigan; married James E. Hogle, May 15, 1867, Hastings, Michigan.

Emma and James were married in an unconventional ceremony that surprised and delighted their friends. This was an age of long engagements, their friends must have thought this one excessive. They became engaged when they lived in Lyons, and James, showing he was serious, followed the Williams family when they moved to Michigan after the war, in October, 1865. But it has now been two years, and people began to wonder, and talk.

Now in those days people, especially those in small towns, had to make their own entertainment, and one form was to create a series of tableaux. These were simple scenes of some sort of activity or other, exotic or domestic, with no plot or great dramatics, and no need of any acting skills.

So one day the local Methodist Episcopal church put on a social for its young people that featured a series of these tableaux. First came one of a man getting his hair cut, and we can only hope that the barber was a professional. Next came a wedding scene, with Emma and James playing the bride and groom. As the scene went on, the audience slowly realized that no one was playing. This was a real ceremony.

The magic must have worked. The marriage lasted over fifty years.

Emma, unlike her family, became a typical housewife (for the times), devoting herself to home and church. (Her grandfather, father, mother, an uncle, two brothers, and a daughter all ran various sorts of mercantile businesses, as did her husband and a brother-in-law). She was a long-time member of the Order of the Eastern Star.

Her first one was in Lyons, New York. George would help when he could, and youngest son Alexander kept the books. Aleck would go off to fight in the Civil War, and die of it, and when that great struggle finished the family moved out west to Hastings, Michigan.

Here they dabbled in real estate, using Alexander's back pay, but nothing much came of that except another ice-cream parlor. This one was only a marginal success, so in 1879 the moved to Grand Rapids.

Of course, Jane opened another ice-cream parlor, the first in that city, and it was successful. A photo taken a few years later shows a prosperous store front, and above the door is a banner proclaiming

You could also get oysters, hot tea, coffee, chocolate, and 5¢ cigars. Campaign banners for the election of 1880 hang in the window, proclaiming Garfield and Arthur as "Our Choice", no surprise for a family that took its Republican politics seriously.

When not running the store, Jane was active in church and charity. She was also a force in the local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.