John Wayne Williams

John Wayne Williams Jr. was born in Tennessee on December 12th, 1931. His family migrated there almost a century ago and have ties all the way back to the early colonization of the America we know today. For most of John’s adult life he lived in Oklahoma City and was a fighter pilot for the Air Force. He died at the extremely young age of twenty-six years old from a plane crash in Apache Arizona. America was not involved in a war at this time so he must have been participating in a test flight or drill of sorts. John’s family unfortunately outlived him, with his sister passing away only a few years ago in 2017.

John’s great grandfather, William Ora Williams, was born in 1840 in Virginia and his family migrated to Tennessee when he was just 18 months old. The family travelled through the mountains by wagon, with nothing to protect the family with a baby from the harsh climate. When William was in his early twenties he fought in the Civil War as a private in the north Virginia infantry. His infantry fought with the Army of North Virginia, including the battle of Gettysburg. To make it through the bloodiest battle of the Civil War is certainly no easy task, and to come home and continue raising a family during the reconstruction era might have been even more difficult. During the war, he received a Bible from his father, Jonathan Williams, which he carried throughout the rest of the war. I traced the Williams lineage back to a man named Thomas Williams, born in 1720, who migrated from Wales to Virginia while America was at war with Great Britain. His other great grandfather, John Eagleton McClain, also served in the Civil War in Company C of Walker’s battalion. Men in company C were from Blount Count, Tennessee, and fought against the Union forces until surrender.

William’s ancestors reigned from all corners of Europe. With extensive research I found an ancestor, named Thomas Philbrick, that migrated to Watertown, Massachusetts from England in 1630. His heritage includes a long line of classic, pioneer structured families, most of which had 13-15 children each. They slowly have migrated from Europe to the American eastern boarder, and from there to where they currently reside, in Tennessee. Records show an extensive community involvement from Thomas after he moved to his colony in Massachusetts. He held the role of constable, grantee, and many other positions. He went on to attempt to create more settlements inland of Massachusetts after selling his estate, but received much backlash from the Native American attacks and him and his companions lost much in the process.

I have found scattered information on the branching lineage of William’s family, but look forward to finding out more about how his family got to America and how they arrived to the places they met their spouses that created this family. It seems that every string I follow leads to a different place in Europe, a different origin story of a family who has played a part in the forming of America. I hope to discover more about the roles that his family played in the Civil War, and how their families have changed after the Union won the war. All ancestors I have researched so far have fought for the Confederate States of America and coping with reconstruction, loss of currency, and the loss of slave labor could be an interesting struggle to track. The most impactful thing I have learned is how the entirety of America was built by immigrants coming to America with hopes of a better life. All of our ancestors came from every corner of the globe, yet we are taking every measure that could be taken to prevent that from happening today.