DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Mr. and Mrs. W. P.
Williams, out here in Coleman County. Now, some folks leave a place and barely leave a mark. William Patrick Williams and his wife Elizabeth — she was a Boles before she married him — they left a mark so deep it's still visible on this land today.
William was born around 1818, Elizabeth around 1822, and the two of them were living in Mississippi when the Civil War came calling. Rather than wait around to see how things settled, they loaded up and headed to Texas. First stop was Cherokee County, but they didn't stay long.
Something about this part of the state called to them, and so they came the rest of the way the old hard way — by wagon train — and set down roots right here. That homestead of theirs didn't stay just a homestead for long. It grew into the nucleus of a whole rural settlement.
And when the community needed a school, the Williamses were the kind of people who helped make that happen too. You build a neighborhood one decision at a time, and they were making those decisions. But don't let the word "settled" fool you into thinking any of this was easy.
William and Elizabeth raised six children through conditions that would test the stoutest heart. Indian raids. A smallpox epidemic.
The kind of hardships that don't get softened by the telling of them. That family came through, though. All of them.
William picked up a nickname somewhere along the way — "Mukewater Bill," they called him, after a stream that ran near his home. He became a pioneer leader in the area, a man whose name meant something in this part of Coleman County. He died in 1898.
Elizabeth followed him in 1899. But the settlement they helped build, the school they helped establish, the six children they raised through raids and epidemic and the long hard grind of frontier life — all of that outlasted them both. That's not a small thing.
That's everything.
What the marker says
William Patrick Williams (ca. 1818-1898) and his wife Elizabeth (Boles) (ca. 1822-1899) migrated to Texas from Mississippi during the Civil War. After a brief stay in Cherokee County, they settled in this area, arriving by wagon train. Their nearby homestead became the nucleus of the neighboring rural settlement, the site of an early school they helped establish. The Williamses and their six children survived many hardships, including Indian raids and a smallpox epidemic. William, often called "Mukewater Bill" for a stream near his home, was a pioneer area leader. (1981)