William Williams, an Early Black Homesteader of Oak Hill, Florida

William "Bill" Williams. NPS photo.

William "Bill" Williams was one of the first African American residents of Oak Hill, Florida, in the late 1800s. Freed from slavery, he had come to Florida with his former enslaver, also named William Williams, whose name he took.

Family and homestead

Williams lived in New Smyrna Beach and married Flora, who worked as a maid in the Bouchell family's home. The 1880 census records Bill, born around 1835, as a farmer and Flora as a housekeeper, with nine children.

Williams went to work at Oak Hill and homesteaded several hundred acres, reaching all the way to the Cypress Swamp, or Turnbull Hammock. After some four years of clearing and improving the land he brought his family there. Flora, taking in her new home, is remembered as exclaiming that her husband had bought nothing but a lot of woods.

A school in the parlour

Oak Hill had one small school for everyone, but Black children could not be taught alongside white children and got only a few irregular hours. In 1901 a schoolroom was added to the Williams home, built from lumber salvaged from the river, washed up from wrecks and lost cargoes. Children first had their lessons in the Williams parlour, which soon doubled as a church as the town grew; the Gordons, Joneses, Taylors and Robinsons were among its families. The school later moved between churches, with teachers supplied by the county, until the first one-room county school building went up in 1927, where Mrs. Nancy V. Cummings taught about sixty children.

A gift to the town

Among Williams's many contributions, the most remembered is the right-of-way he gave a Mr. Flagler for the Florida East Coast Railroad, free and with no conditions, because he was delighted to have the railroad pass through Oak Hill. He was killed when a falling timber struck his head while he was putting up a building.

Sources

• National Park Service, Canaveral National Seashore, "William Williams," written by Ashley Lord. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/william-williams.htm
• Its sources: Mary Dewees, History and Memories of Oak Hill, Florida (1984), p. 48; the 1880 U.S. census, Oak Hill, Volusia County, Florida.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.