Thomas Smith Williamson, M.D., was the son of Rev. William Williamson and Mary Smith, and was born in Union District, South Carolina, in March, 1800. William Williamson commenced classical studies when quite young; but the school he attended was broken up by the appointment of the teacher as an officer in the Revolutionary army. When about sixteen years of age, while on a visit to an uncle's on the head-waters of the Kanawha, in Virginia, several families in the neighborhood were taken captive by the Indians, and he joined a company of volunteers which was raised to go in pursuit. After more than a week's chase, they were entirely successful, and lost only one of their own number. When not yet eighteen years old, he was drafted into the North Carolina militia, and accompanied Gates in his unfortunate expedition through the Carolinas. After the war was over and the family had removed to South Carolina, William resumed his studies and was graduated at Hampton Sidney College--studied theology, and was ordained pastor of Fair Forest Church, in April, 1793. The grandfather of Thomas Smith Williamson was Thomas Williamson, and his grandmother's maiden name was Ann Newton, a distant relative of Sir Isaac and Rev. John Newton. They were both raised in Pennsylvania, but removed first to Virginia and then to the Carolinas, where they became the owners of slaves, the most of whom were purchased at their own request to keep them from falling into the hands of hard masters. Thus Rev. William Williamson was born into the condition of slaveholder. By both his first and second marriage also, he became the owner of others, which, by the laws of South Carolina, would have been the property of his children. For the purpose of giving them their liberty, he removed, in 1805, from South Carolina to Adams County, Ohio. Before her marriage, Mary Smith had taught a number of the young negroes to read. And of their descendants quite a number are now in Ohio. It should be remembered that the Smiths and Williamsons of the eighteenth century thought it right, under the circumstances in which they were, _to buy and hold slaves, but not right to sell them. They never sold any_.