James H. Williams
History of Kershaw's Brigade by G. Augustus Dickert

Pgs 98-100 Colonel James H. Williams, of the Third South Carolina Volunteers Colonel James H. Williams, the commander of the Third South Carolina Regiment, was born in Newberry County, October 4th, 1813.  He was of Welsh descent, his ancestors immigrating to this country with Lord Baltimore.  He was English by his maternal grandmother.  The grandfather of Colonel Williams was a Revolutionary soldier, and was killed at the battle of Ninety-Six.  The father of the subject of this sketch was also a soldier, and held the office of Captain in the war of 1812. Colonel Williams, it would seem, inherited his love for the military service from his ancestors, and in early life joined a company of Nullifers, in 1831.  He also served in the Florida War.  His ardor in military matters was such he gave little time for other attainments; he had no high school or college education.  When only twenty-four years old he was elected Major of the Thirty-eighth  Regiment of State Militia, and in 1843 took the “Captaincy of the McDuffie Artillery, a crack volunteer company of Newberry.  In 1846 he organized a company for the Mexican War, and was mustered into service in 1847 as Company L, Palmetto Regiment.  He was in all the battles of that war, and, with the Palmetto Regiment, won distinction on every field.  After his return from Mexico he was elected Brigadier General and then Major General of State Militia.  He served as Mayor of his town, Commissioner in Equity, and in the State Legislature. Before the breaking out of the Civil War, he had acquired some large estates in the West, and was there attending to some business connected therewith when South Carolina seceded.  The companies that were to compose the Third Regiment elected him their Colonel, but in his absence, when the troops were called into service, they were commanded for the time by Lieutenant Colonel Foster, of Spartanburg.  He joined the Regiment at “Lightwood Knot Springs,” the 1st of May.  He commanded the Third during the term of its first enlistment, and carried it through the first twelve months' campaign in Virginia. At the reorganization of the regiment, the men composing it being almost wholly young men, desired new blood at the head of the volunteer service, and elected Captain James D. Nance in his stead.  After his return to the State, he was placed at the head of the Fourth and Ninth Regiments of State Troops, and served as such until the close. After the war, he returned to Arkansas and continued his planting operations until the time of his death, August 21st, 1892.  He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of that State in 1874. Colonel Williams was a born soldier, considerate of and kind to his men.  He was cool and fearless to a fault.  He understood tactics thoroughly, but was wanting in those elements of discipline – its sterness and rigidity that was required to govern troops in actual war.  His age counted against him as a strict disciplinarian, but not as a soldier.  He was elected to the Legislature of this State before Reconstruction, as well as a member of the Constitutional Convention of Arkansas in 1874.

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