“Captain
Williams was born at Smithville, now Southport, North Carolina February
4, 1849, a son of Edgar and Susan Osgood Andrew (Potter) Williams,
natives of Charleston, South Carolina, and Smithville, North Carolina,
respectively. The father was a master mariner in the trade to the West
Indies until his death in February, 1863, and the mother died in 1862,
he only surviving her for a year.
When
a lad he witnessed both bombardments of Fort Fisher, and other war
activities of this region, with such vivid interest that the impressions
remain, and for some years he has been collecting relics taken from
Fort Fisher . . . donating this collection to the public schools of
Wilmington, to be handed down to generations yet to come. In 1921 he
raised a fund to place a monument at Fort Fisher [to memorialize the]
engagement which Captain Williams witnessed, January 14, 1865, which
resulted in the fall of the Confederate stronghold January 15, 1865.
In
March 1874, Captain Williams married Ida Jane Fleet, born at
Wilmington, a daughter of James and Caroline (Sholar) Fleet, natives of
Granville, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Wilmington, respectively.
During the
War between the States Mr. Fleet supervised the loading and
distribution of cargoes to and from blockade runners in the port of
Wilmington, and [his] business of towing, wrecking, barging and general
handling of ships is now conducted under the name of the Diamond
Steamboat and Wrecking Company.
It
has always been a source of deep regret to Captain Williams that his
tender years prevented his participation in the War Between the States .
. . [though] Probably the work [he has] accomplished in discovering and
preserving relics . . . will not be appreciated at its proper value
until this generation has passed, but it is none the less important.
[He] has located four guns of the Lamb battery, named for Col. William
Lamb, wounded at Fort Fisher. These guns were buried on the west side
of the Cape Fear River in 1865, and they laid there until discovered by
Captain Williams.
He
has recently discovered in the course of his investigations [the wreck
of the privateer CSS Chickamauga], taken up to a point about forty miles
above Wilmington, known as Indian Wells.
Captain Williams had the misfortune to lose his wife by death July 5, 1923.”
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