There is perhaps nowhere to be found a more picturesque and interesting character of the colored race than “Parson” Williams, who, besides serving as a colored bishop of the Union American Methodist Church (colored) for more than a half century, is the composer of Negro spirituals which were popular during their day.  He attended President Lincoln’s inauguration and subsequently every Republican and Democratic presidential inauguration, although he himself is a Republican.  Lincoln, according to Williams, shook hands with him in Washington.

One of Williams’ sons, of a family of fourteen children, was named after George Washington, and another after Abraham Lincoln.  The son, George Washington Williams, died in 1912 at the age of seventy-three years.

“Parson” Williams, serving the Union forces as a teamster, hauled munitions and supplies for General Grant’s army, at Gettysburg.  On trips to the rear, he conveyed wounded soldiers from the line of fire.  He also served under General McClellan and General Hooker.

Although now confined to his home with infirmities of age, he posesses all his faculties and has a good memory of events since his boyhood days.  Due to the fact that his grandmother was an Indian the daughter of an Indian chieftan, alleged to be buried in a vault in Baltimore County, Williams was a freeman like his father and hired himself out.

Williams claims that his father, when a boy, accompanied Robert Bowie, for whom he was working, to Mount Vernon, where he first met George Washington.  He said that General Washington once became very angry at his father because he struck an unruly horse, exclaiming:  “The brute has more sense than some slaves.  Cease striking the animal.”

Robert Bowie, the third son of Capt.  William and Margaret (Sprigg) Bowie, was born at “Mattaponi”, near Nottingham, March 1750.  As a captain of a company of militia organized at Nottingham, he accompanied the Maryland forces when they joined Washington in his early campaign near New York.  He and Washington became friends.  In 1791, when Captain William Bowie died, his son Robert inherited “Mattaponi”.  He was the first Democratic governor to be elected, one of the presidential electors for Madison, and a director of the first bank established at Annapolis.

Williams recalls hearing his father say that when Washington died, December 14, 1799, many paid reverence by wearing mourning scarfs and hatbands.

He recalls many interesting incidents during slavery days.  He said that slaves could not buy or sell anything except with the permission of their master.  If a slave was caught ten miles from his master’s home, and had no signed permit, he was arrested as a runaway and harshly punished.