Lorenzo F. Williams, farmer and citizen of the Twenty-fourth District, was born in Carroll County in 1843, and is the ninth in a family of ten children, six of whom are now living. The father, Thomas Williams, was born in North Carolina about 1795, and was of English ancestry. He received a good common-school and business education, and in 1817 married Harriet Blair. In about 1832 he immigrated to Carroll County and settled in the Thirteenth District, where his career ended. He was an active, industrious man, and at the time of his death, which occurred about 1848, was the owner of about 450 acres of land. The mother was also a native of North Carolina, born in 1809 and died about 1857.
The father having died when Lorenzo was but a child, he was reared under the tender care of a mother’s watchful eye. He received his education in the neighboring schools, and partly at Parker’s Cross Roads in Henderson County. November, 1866, he married Caledonia McCall, a native of Carroll County, born in 1849, and the daughter of Dr. Henry and Frances McCall, of Clarksburg. Eight children were the result of our subject’s marriage: Thomas H., Sidney H., Lorenzo P., Lizzie Frances, George W., Marietta, Bertha Mabel and John H.
After marriage our subject settled in the Thirteenth District for one year and then removed to the farm on which he now resides, having owned it three different times. He was in the mercantile business for some time and also lived in Kentucky a year. He is now the owner of 160 acres of valuable land all well improved, three and a half miles northeast of Clarksburg. He is a liberal supporter of all charitable and religious institutions and a Democrat in politics, casting his first presidential vote for Horatio Seymour. He was formerly a member of the Masonic fraternity but is now demitted. Mr. and Mrs. Williams are both prominent members of the Christian Church and are much esteemed citizens.
Transcribed by David Donahue
Source: History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Carroll, Henry and Benton Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Original Observations, Reminiscences, Etc., Etc. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1978.