| Notes |
- Rufus Pitt Williams was born April 3, 1848, in the Deep South- - Tallapoosa County, Alabama. I?m sure as he was a little boy, the issues of secession from the Union were already being discussed among his father, William Wesley Williams, and his much older brothers, William LaFayette Williams (a doctor, born in 1833) Baron (born in 1836) and others of the community. I don?t know that they were slaveholders at that point, and I need to look that up, but, obviously, they lived in a place and era that supported slavery. One week after Pitt turned 13, the attack on Fort Sumter began the Civil War. Again, I wonder how quickly the news spread and how they were informed of what was going on in Washington and in South Carolina and along the Mason-Dixon Line in those first battles. Pitt was one of the younger members in the family and his older brother Baron went off to fight in the Civil War. Imagine what the home life was like as they waited for word of his fate and also prepared their home and property for possible invasion from the North. Baron did survive the Civil War, though he lost an arm. He came home and became a successful merchant after the war.
When Pitt was 20, he married Martha Robertson. She was also from the community and had lived nearby for many years. Pitt?s brother Thomas Cooper married Martha?s sister, so their children were double cousins. She died after only 5 years of marriage. They had two daughters and then she gave birth to a son and he died before he was a year old, so I wonder if there was a flu epidemic or something that killed them both near the same time? I think she is buried in the Darien Cemetery in Tallapoosa County, but I'm not sure from web research and I need to make a trip to research. Soon after, Pitt married Martha?s cousin Nancy Clark Adkins. I?m sure that was common in those days to marry family members and certainly both were neighbors for a long period of time and would have been known to Pitt. And I?m sure Nancy loved her cousin Martha?s children as her own.
Pitt and Nancy began to have their own children and had one daughter and then their one and only son, Charles Wesley Williams. He was born in 1878. They had two more daughters and then in 1884, when Charley was 6, they moved to Texas. This was not an impulsive move. Pitt?s first father-in-law, Martha?s father, Allen Jordan Robertson had already moved to Texas. I have no doubt that he made a return trip to encourage other members of his family to move to Texas with him. Pitt and Nancy and a bunch of children and some livestock loaded up a wagon and moved to East Texas. I believe Nancy was preganant during trip and gave birth to another girl after they were in Texas. Several of Pitt's family members continued to live in East Texas, but the Robertsons and Pitt and Nancy ended up in Cornhill, Texas, in Williamson County, near Jarrell. .
All together, Pitt and Nancy had 9 children, 8 daughters and 1 son, and the 2 daughters from his first marriage, so 10 daughters and 1 son from this family grew to adulthood.
The father-in-law Allen Jordan Robertson died in 1905and is buried in the Cornhill Cemetery as are twin babies of Pitt?s brother Cooper and sister-in-law Ellie. As the family grew up in the community, they married neighbors. Charley met Mattie Lett, another immigrant from Alabama (though I don?t know if there were any connections in Alabama or not) after they met at a church social. They married in Corn Hill in 1902.
In ___, Pitt and Nancy (and children?) moved to Chico, Texas, near Decatur, in Wise County. There they lived out their days and are both buried in the Chico cemetery near at least three of their daughters, their daughter Esther who never married, one who married a Morrow, and one other. Pitt died May 21, 1926, at the age of 78, of heart trouble.
Source: http://janicewilliamsaustin.com/familyproject.html#RUFUS_PITT_WILLIAMS
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1848 - 1926 (78 years)
