Allegheny County PA Archives Biographies.....Williams, Samuel August 5, 1802 - September 8, 1887
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Source: self-published
Author: Merrill F. Anderson

BIOGRAPHY OF REV. SAMUEL WILLIAMS (1802-1887)

Rev. Samuel Williams was born August 5, 1802, in Connellsville, Fayette County, 
in southwestern Pennsylvania, and died September 8, 1887, in Brooklyn, New 
York.  

Sam was a well known Baptist preacher, an abolitionist and Temperance worker.  
From 1827 to 1856 he was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania.

He was the fourth of the 11 children of Charles and Mary (McLain) Williams.  
Charles was born in Goshen, New York.  When he was a small child during the 
Revolutionary War his parents, John and Hannah (Finch) Williams, moved the 
family to near Martinsburg, now in West Virginia, before settling in the wilds 
of Bedford County, Pennsylvania.  Charles told his children of the dangers he 
faced when the settlements were young, and how they had been subject to Indian 
raids.  

One old, oft repeated story that Sam remembered in particular was of a small 
girl in a peach tree who had been taken and scalped by Indians, survived, and 
spent several years in captivity.  When she and other captives were finally 
released by a treaty with the Indians, they were brought before their parents 
to be claimed.  Standing there, all dressed as Indians and having forgotten 
their native tongue, some were unrecognizable.  The girl's mother couldn't pick 
her daughter out of the group of unclaimed girls, and the girl couldn't 
recognize her mother.   As the story went, the two were reunited when the 
mother started to sing an old German hymn the girl had been fond of as a child.

Charles Williams was a blacksmith and bell maker and had his log dwelling and 
shop at the corner of Spring Street and Mountain Alley in Connellsville.  He 
was eight times elected to the town council.  In 1818 he moved the family to 
Bracken County, Kentucky, and shortly thereafter to Brown County, Ohio, just 
across the Ohio River.  From there they moved to Middletown, Henry County, 
Indiana, where Charles died in 1848 and his wife, Mary, in 1857.  An entry in 
their family bible states "We were baptized and joined the church 1801."  The 
denomination they joined is not mentioned.
  
In 1820 Sam was studying at an academy in Zanesville, Ohio, and presumably 
living in the home of his mother's parents, Jacob and Elizabeth (Wilson) 
McLain.  They had married very young.  Both were from old Maryland families and 
had come up to Bedford County, Pennsylvania, from Frederick County, Maryland, 
around 1783.   From Bedford County they moved to Zanesville by 1812. 
 
Jacob reportedly was a Revolutionary War veteran and had fought at Bunker 
Hill.  Into his later years he still wore velvet knee breeches and silk 
stockings.  

Sam's grandmother, Elizabeth, while a young girl living on Pipe Creek in 
Frederick County, had been converted to Methodism through hearing John Wesley 
during his tour of America.  Wesley's close friend and fellow pioneer Methodist 
evangelist, Robert Strawbridge, lived and preached not far from Elizabeth's 
home.

Sam was baptized in 1822 at Zanesville, and decided to preach the Gospel.  He 
wrote:  "…at Zanesville… I was converted under the preaching of George C. 
Sedwick, who had been a student of Dr. Staughton of Philadelphia and soon after 
began to speak in public.  He put Gill's "Divinity" and Mosheim's "Church 
History" in my hands, directing my studies for two years.  By too close 
application I came near death with typhoid fever.  When partially recovered, 
our doctor deacon sent me off to Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania.  I soon began 
to improve, and a Presbyterian church there had lately lost their pastor and 
urged me to preach for them, where I received the first little salary for 18 
months."

Bedford Springs had long been known for the healing effects of its mineral 
waters, and it attracted people from near and far.  A favorite vacation spot 
for politicians and Presidents, it was located in the county where Sam's 
parents' had grown up and he had many cousins in the area.

After recuperating, Sam was called by the Redstone Association to be a 
traveling evangelist.  Later he spent 1826 and part of 1827 caring for two 
churches, one in Schellsburg, Bedford County, and one in neighboring Somerset 
County, where he and other preachers boarded with "Aunty" Mary Graft.   It was 
in Somerset County that he had been ordained.  Sources give 1824 or 1826 as his 
year of ordination. 

One day in 1826 he was asked by a Mr. Schell to perform the funeral of his aged 
mother-in-law, Mrs. Rebecca Statler.  The funeral was to be held at the home of 
another son-in-law, a Mr. Lambert, in the Allegheny Mountains near Stoystown.  
Once there, Schell helped Sam prepare his eulogy by giving him some details 
about Mrs. Statler's life.  He took Sam into the room where her body was laid, 
and, pulling back her cap, showed that long ago she had been scalped.  Schell 
told him that Indians had taken her when she was a small child, healed her 
wound, and did not release her for seven years.  After being released, the way 
the girl recognized her mother was through her mother's singing her favorite 
childhood hymn.   It was obvious to Sam that he was looking into the face of 
the heroine of that story he had so often heard years before.

In 1827, at the age of 25, Rev. Samuel Williams became pastor of the First 
Baptist Church of Pittsburgh.  That year was probably the year of his first 
marriage, to Sarah, "one of the (church) members, a young widow of my age… "  
Sarah was born Sarah Wendt in 1802 and died in 1851.  About two years after her 
death, Sam, "having one small daughter, married a Methodist lady and gave her 
the New Testament to study… "  The second wife was Louisa Johnson.  She was 
born in 1822 and died in 1905.  Sam had four children with Sarah and three with 
Louisa.

Sam was pastor at Pittsburgh for 28 years.  During this time he resumed studies 
and in 1830 graduated from the Western Theological Seminary at Pittsburgh.   
Six other churches were established in the area while Sam was here.  One of 
these was the First Baptist Church of Wheeling, (now West) Virginia. 
 
In 1834 he edited a hymnal "The Lyrica:  a Collection of Psalms, Hymns and 
Spiritual Songs, adapted to general use".

The abolition of slavery was a cause that claimed much of Sam's time and 
effort.  He helped found the Anti-Slavery Society of Western Pennsylvania, and 
in 1836 began publication of an abolitionist newspaper, the "Christian 
Witness".  It ran for sixteen years. 
 
In 1837 Sam and other well-known Pittsburgh anti-slavery men organized a 
memorial service for Elijah P. Lovejoy, publisher of an abolitionist newspaper 
at Alton, Illinois, who, after a long period of harassment, had been gunned 
down by a mob.

Sam brought abolitionist speakers, including the renowned Frederick Douglass, 
to the church.   Years later, in 1880, in response to a letter inquiring about 
his speaking in Pittsburgh, Douglass wrote: 

"I have the honor to acknowledge your favor of yesterday, informing me that 
Rev. Samuel Williams lately mentioned that I lectured in the First Baptist 
Church in Pittsburgh, and his belief that that was my first public address…  I 
well remember speaking in that church a little less than 40 years ago… It was 
esteemed by me at the time a high mark of courage and liberality of the First 
Baptist Church that its doors were thrown open to the cause of my then despised 
and enslaved people, and I rejoice that I have lived to be able to see my 
people free, and to acknowledge the benevolent spirit of the church that gave 
me leave to plead for emancipation within its walls, when to do so was to make 
itself odious in the eyes of the general public, and even of surrounding 
churches…"

Sam is reported to have been "one of the most effective workers with the 
Underground Railroad" and to have numbered among his intimate friends Henry 
Clay, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.

Signey Rigdon had been pastor of the Pittsburgh First Baptist Church some years 
before Sam.  After he left he helped Joseph Smith establish the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Sam made a study of Rigdon's life and activities 
at Pittsburgh and the founding of that church.  In 1842 he published a pamphlet 
on his findings and lectured on the subject.

In the 1850's, when some members of his congregation were experimenting with 
Spiritualism, Sam attended a few of their meetings to gain an understanding of 
that new movement.  At his first meeting, the director of the session claimed 
to be relaying words from one of Sam's deceased friends. 
  
Sam was well known among his fellow ministers as an ardent opponent of infant 
baptism and denounced it in the strongest terms.  In 1852 the Association his 
church belonged to held a meeting at McKeesport, Pennsylvania.  The meeting was 
to be held on a Sunday, and many of the visiting ministers were invited to be 
guest speakers at churches in the area.  Sam accepted an invitation from the 
First Methodist Episcopal Church.   Members of the Association were amused to 
hear later that, after Sam was introduced and seated in the pulpit, the church 
pastor announced that, before hearing the guest speaker, a special service was 
to be performed.  At that point, 23 babies, in their mothers' arms, were 
brought in before the pulpit and the rite of sprinkling was administered. 
  
In 1856, saying goodby to Pittsburgh after 28 years, Sam's new assignment was 
at Akron, in northern Ohio.  Here he stayed from 1856 to 1862.  During this 
period, in 1858, he engaged in two public debates, each with a Universalist 
minister.  They were held two weeks apart, at Centerville and Casstown, toward 
Ohio's southwestern corner.

The Civil War had begun in 1861, and through the American Tract Society Sam was 
able to expand his preaching to the troops.  He wrote at least two tracts for 
them:  "The Social Glass", an exhortation to temperance, and "The Eloquent 
Senator".  

After Akron, home for Sam and Louisa for at least the next eight years was 
Springfield, Ohio.  Here again, as at Akron, they conducted a school for young 
women.   

After Springfield came a couple of years at New Castle, Pennsylvania.  By 1874 
they were back in the Pittsburgh area, in the borough of Castle Shannon.   Sam 
was building a new church and school there, and preaching in churches in the 
area around Pittsburgh.  

By 1884 at least two of Sam's children had moved to New York City.  Sam and 
Louisa followed them there and found a home at 188 Tompkins Avenue in Brooklyn. 
 
In a letter to a grandson in November of 1884, he wrote:  "Give my respects to 
Mr. Phillips when you see him and tell him I am abolitionist against rum now as 
I used to be against slavery." 
 
When he no longer had Slavery to fight, Sam took up the cause of Temperance, or 
national Prohibition.  In 1874 at Pittsburgh he had joined the National 
Christian Temperance Alliance and was appointed to their Business Committee.  
Now at New York ten years later he was leading the opening prayer of a meeting 
of the Executive Committee of the Kings County Prohibitionists.  Before long he 
became dissatisfied with the direction that group was taking, so in 1886 he and 
his son Allen, who worked with his father in the Movement, helped organize the 
new Liberty Hall Temperance Union. Allen became the first secretary of this 
union and Sam the first chaplain. 

Allen Samuel Williams, in addition to sharing his father's desire to see 
Prohibition the law of the land, also worked against the evils of the drug 
trade .  He had just made a study of hashish and opium addiction and published 
the results in "The Demon of the Orient".  This book was to be instrumental in 
getting new drug laws enacted in New York State.  

In April 1887 the new church building of Emmanual Baptist Church was formally 
dedicated.  Rev. Sam read the Scripture lesson from Isaiah 11, and closed the 
service with the benediction.

Rev. Adolph Gumbart was pastor of the Noble Street Baptist Church in the 
Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.  In early 1887 he became ill and needed several 
months' rest.  Sam was one of a dozen or so prominent ministers who volunteered 
to substitute for him during his absence.  Being now in his 85th year, Sam was 
in declining health himself, and the sermon he preached for Rev. Gumbart was to 
be his last. 
 
Sam died suddenly at his home in Brooklyn on September 8, 1887.  He had 
suffered for several years with kidney disease, but heart disease was the 
immediate cause of death.   On the afternoon of September 9 a brief and simple 
service was held at the home, and in the evening the body was taken to 
Pittsburgh for burial.  On September 10 he was laid to rest in Allegheny 
Cemetery alongside his first wife and three children. 
 
The following month the 21st annual meeting of the Long Island Baptist 
Association was held at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn.  On October 20 the 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported:  "The Rev. Dr. Middleditch read the report of 
the Committee on Obituaries.  The report noted the death during the year of the 
Rev. Samuel Williams, at the time of his death connected with Emmanuel Church…  
On motion of the Rev. Mr. Gumbart of Greenpoint the report was adopted.  In 
making the motion he referred especially to the late Rev. Samuel Williams.  His 
last action, the speaker said, was preached before the Greenpoint church while 
the pastor (the speaker) was very ill.  At the suggestion of the moderator the 
audience joined in singing the hymn, "Oh, for the death of those who slumber in 
the Lord".  Sam had served in the ministry for over 60 years.

Rev. Samuel Williams was survived by his second wife, Louisa; son John H. 
Williams of New Brighton PA; daughter Mary Eliza, wife of Henry E. "Harry" 
Marshall of Independence MO; daughter Emma, wife of Charles T. Dunwell, of 
Brooklyn NY; son Allen Samuel Williams, Brooklyn; five grandchildren and two 
great-grandchildren.  He was predeceased by son Charles F. Williams and 
daughters Ann E. and Sarah Louisa Williams.


Additional Comments:
For further information on the descendants of John and Hannah (Finch) Williams, 
see "A Family History and List of Descendants of Charles Williams and Mary 
(McLain) Williams", available on microfilm loan at LDS Family History Centers.

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