Christopher Bishop

When George Williams arrived Charleston in 1852, he immediately set himself apart from the city's old aristocratic families, whose work habits gave the city its well-earned reputation as a center of leisure. He would become the richest man in postwar Charleston, but he never fit in with local elites, whose attention to lineage remains legendary today.  He was always an outsider among the old families and they looked on him and his pious lifestyle with a sort of bemused curiosity. Williams stood out like a sore thumb in a society famous for its love of dance, rich food, and strong drink, but nobody could ignore his wealth.

 

Williams was born in Burke County in the mountains of western North Carolina, far removed from the pretension of Charleston society, to a family of Welsh descent. His father Edward was born in the part of Massachusetts that is now the state of Maine but moved South, settling for a time in Burke County. Williams, a farmer and merchant, soon moved his family to northeast Georgia. Edward was a strict father and young George was anxious to get out on his own. He left home as a teenager and his father offered him nothing to get a start in the world, believing his son would return home soon enough.

 

The eighteen year-old never looked back and made his way to Augusta where he embarked on a remarkable career. He started out as a clerk in Daniel Hand's wholesale grocery business, making only $50 (plus board) his first year. But he learned the trade and drew the attention of his bosses. Within three years, he was Hand's business partner. Even at this young age, Williams' religious conviction inspired him to persuade Hand to stop selling liquor. He became active in the Methodist church and became friends with Bishop George Pierce and the Rev. William M. Wightman (who became a bishop himself in 1866). Williams married Louisa Wightman, the sister of Bishop Wightman, in 1843. Louise died in 1855 but he soon remarried.

 

Williams moved to Charleston in 1852 and was astonished by what he saw. None of the other merchants opened for business before nine in the morning and most spent their mornings in the coffee houses on Broad Street until after ten o'clock or, for some, noon. Williams claimed that his fellow Charlestonians "could make a living beginning the days' work at 9 o'clock," but they could "make more than a living starting some hours earlier." Williams threw himself into his business. His estimated wealth in 1858 (which he downplayed on the 1860 census) was $250,000, substantial even by antebellum Charleston standards. And he maintained his refusal to deal in liquor.

 

If his work habits and piety set Williams apart for the city's elites, his politics also earned him sideways glances. He was a Whig and never embraced the Democratic Party until after the Civil War. Living in such a hotbed of radicalism convinced him that war with the North was coming and he wisely converted his estate into reliable investments including real estate, gold, and cotton. Many in Charleston suffered gravely in the Civil War, but Williams made off very well. Some have suggested that he was a blockade runner and it is known that he made a million dollars during the war. When Charleston fell to Sherman's troops in 1865, he greeted them on the outskirts of the city with a white flag. Williams would not play the part of the prideful Charleston aristocrat. 

 

He was ready to expand his businesses and he set to work buying up burned out parts of town and built several large warehouses for cotton, fertilizer, and general merchandise. He rebuilt the Charleston Iron Works and invested in a large cotton press. But he was hamstrung because he lived in a cash poor society and had trouble paying to get cotton to the city. So immediately after the war, he founded a bank that boasted around $2 million in capital in 1873. Eventually he quit the mercantile trade and became a full-time banker.

 

Nobody matched Williams’ conspicuous consumption in postwar Charleston. In 1876, he built a splendid Italianate-style mansion at 16 Meeting Street for the extravagant price of $200,000, a sum almost unthinkable in a city still recovering from the war and the economic downturn of the 1870s. It remains the largest private home in Charleston at 24,000 square feet with twenty-five rooms. The top floor hosts a large ballroom with a massive skylight. In 1892, he added a Queen Anne frame house on the property, a wedding gift to his daughter. Today, it is known as the Calhoun Mansion and it is open for tours.  

 

Williams, along with a few other forward looking entrepreneurs, attempted to revive the fortunes of their great city. But the old families were stubborn and never willing bought into Williams' vision of Charleston as a modern economic hub. The old elites never welcomed Williams as a true equal and always looked down on his plebian roots and moralistic ways they associated with middle class Methodism. He died in 1903, one of the richest men in town, more respected by his fellow Methodists that by the Charlestonian elites he eclipsed financially. 

 

Further reading:

E. Merton Coulter, George Walton Williams: The Life of a Southern Merchant and Banker, 1820-1903 (Athens, Ga.: Hibriten Press, 1976).

 

Don H. Doyle, New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, Mobile, 1860-1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).