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Samuel Cole Williams (1864-1947) was a noted 19th and 20th century Tennessee jurist, historian, educator, and businessman.
Early life
Samuel C. Williams was born January 15, 1864 near Humboldt, Tennessee. At the urging of family friend Horace Lurton, later a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Williams pursued law training. He attended Vanderbilt University's School of Law and graduated in June 1884. After a few years of legal practice in Jonesborough, Tennessee Williams moved to Johnson City, Tennessee in 1892.
Williams joined politician Walter P. Brownlow in forming Watauga Light and Power Company and the Johnson City Transit Company (Johnson City Streetcar Company). In conjunction with John Cox he established the Banking and Trust Company which later became Unaka National Bank, Tennessee National Bank, and finally Hamilton National Bank. Judge Williams also had interests in Empire Chair Company and the John Sevier Hotel.
Government and Political Service
In 1912 he became Chancellor of First Chancery Division of Tennessee. In 1913 he was appointed to complete a vacated seat on the Tennessee Supreme Court. The next year he was elected to the court for a four year term. He was re-elected in 1918. He left the Tennessee Supreme Court to serve as first dean of the Lamar School of Law (also known as Emory University School of Law) at, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia from 1919 to 1924.
He was appointed to codify the laws of Tennessee in 1928 and again in 1938. His eight volume work, Williams Annotated Code of Tennessee, commonly known as "The Williams Code", became a model for other state revisions.
Historian and Writer
In 1925 Judge Williams retired to his home, "Aquone", at Johnson City, Tennessee. The house, named after a Cherokee word for "resting place" was modeled after a Maryland colonial home Williams had visited. His personal library was fashioned after the design of Sir Walter Scott's study at Abbotsford House. The home is named on both the Tennessee Historical Register and the National Register of Historic Places.
In his later years he devoted much of his time to writing. His history texts and articles carried his personal, if wordy, enthusiastic style which helped to popularize local history studies. Tennessee Governor Prentice Cooper appointed him to head the rejuvenated Tennessee Historical Commission in 1941. In that position he founded publications and arranged the 1944 purchase of a Johnson City farm which became the Tipton-Haynes Historic Site. During these years Williams founded the East Tennessee Historical Society and was also in part responsible for providing the land and financing of the public library in Johnson City named in memory of his son, Mayne Williams.
During his final years he helped prepare for the Tennessee Sesquicentennial in 1946 and was a member of the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Civil Procedure in the Federal Courts.
Judge Williams was an avid scholar and collector of Tennessee history and gave many items to libraries and museums. His papers are found in the East Tennessee State University Archives of Appalachia, the University of Tennessee's Frank H. McClung Museum and in the Archives of Emory University.
He died December 14, 1947.
Selected works by Samuel Cole Williams
History of the Lost State of Franklin (1924)
Lieut. Henry Timberlake's Memoirs, 1756-1765 (editor, 1927)
Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 1540-1800 (1928)
Adair's History of the American Indians (editor, 1930) (see James Adair (historian))
Beginnings of West Tennessee: In the Land of the Chickasaws, 1541-1841 (1930)
General John T. Wilder, Commander of the Lightning Brigade (1936)
Dawn of Tennessee Valley and Tennessee History (1937)
History of Johnson City and its Environs (1940)
Phases of Southwest Territory History (1940)
The Lincolns and Tennessee (1942)
Tennessee During the Revolutionary War (1944)
Phases of the History of the Supreme Court of Tennessee (1944)
The Admission of Tennessee into the Union (1945)
William Tatham, Wataugan (1947)
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SAMUEL COLE WILLIAMS
1864-1947
Jurist and historian Samuel Cole Williams was born in Gibson County in 1864 and educated in the schools of Humboldt. Encouraged by Judge Horace Lurton--a family friend and later a U.S. Supreme Court justice--he enrolled in the Vanderbilt University law school and graduated in 1884. Soon thereafter, Williams accepted attorney Sam Kirkpatrick's invitation to become his partner in Jonesborough. Eight years later, after his partner died, Williams moved to Johnson City, the emerging business center of the Tri-States area. He established an enviable reputation as a lawyer, and his clients included railroads, industrialists, and businessmen. He invested wisely in real estate, banks, and industries. Williams was appointed to a vacancy on the Tennessee State Supreme Court in 1913 and the next year was elected to a full term. He resigned to become dean of the Lamar School of Law of Emory University from 1919 to 1924.
Successful attorney, businessman, jurist, and teacher, the sixty-year-old Williams returned to Johnson City, where he kept morning office hours--looking after his business interests and taking a few cases that interested him. In the afternoons and evenings, he worked at home in his comfortable library, writing the history of Tennessee from earliest times to statehood. Since 1893, he had been collecting material on the early settlers and had published ten articles in the Tennessee Historical Magazine, Tennessee Bar Association Proceedings, Journal of American History, and Tennessee Law Review. When he died December 14, 1947, he had written six books on early Tennessee history: History of the Lost State of Franklin (1924); Beginnings of West Tennessee in the Land of the Chickasaws, 1591-1814 (1930); General John T. Wilder, Commander of the Lightning Brigade (1936); Dawn of Tennessee Valley and Tennessee History (1937); Tennessee During the Revolutionary War (1944); and William Tatham, Wataugan (1947). To this list may be added some fifty articles and monographs.
In 1929 judges of the state supreme court, authorized by the state legislature, appointed Williams chairman of a committee to draft an official law code. The Code of Tennessee 1932 soon became known in legal circles as the "Williams Code."
During World War II, the "judge" helped editors of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and East Tennessee Historical Society Publications meet their schedules. The former published nine of his articles, and the latter featured three. Elected chairman of the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1941, Williams promoted a state program placing markers at or near historical sites throughout Tennessee and encouraged the preservation of local records and private papers for students, professors, and history buffs to use in their studies of local history. Williams's campaign for better county histories led to the publication of Historic Madison (1946) by Emma Inman Williams and Robert E. Corlew's A History of Dickson County From Earliest Times to the Present (1956), works which serve as models for amateurs and professionals alike.
An enthusiastic researcher, Williams corresponded with librarians, antiquarians, archivists, and historians who shared ideas and information with him. In 1921 and 1929 he traveled to England to conduct research on William Tatham. Like Henry Adams, he employed clerks to make legible copies of journals, letters, and documents. The judge wrote his books and articles in long hand, and his wife typed them. His daughter, Gertrude Williams Miller, tried to eliminate dangling participles and other errors with little success; her father had his own preferences. Although he was criticized for his prose and the errors in his manuscripts, Williams's contribution to the early history of Tennessee far outweighs these carpings.
Frank B. Williams Jr., East Tennessee State University
Suggested Reading(s): Pollyana Creekmore, "Bibliography of Historical Writings of Samuel Cole Williams," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications 20 (1948): 9-15; Frank B. Williams Jr., "Introduction to the New Edition" of Tennessee During the Revolutionary War, by Samuel Cole Williams (1974), v-xvi.