Meet David R. Williams, maverick of Society Hill
David Rogerson Williams, planter, builder, inventor, U.S. House member, soldier and former SC Governor. (March 8, 1776 – November 17, 1830)
From Staff Reports
There’s a lot to be said about onetime Society Hill-area resident David Rogerson Williams.
He was South Carolina governor from 1814-16.
He built the first cottonseed-oil mill in South Carolina, history says.
He was the first known planter in South Carolina to construct levees along the rivers adjoining his property.
And today, a heavily used highway in Darlington County is named in his honor.
A sometime newspaperman, sometime attorney, he was best known as a planter. Born in the Cheraws District (part of that area later became Darlington County), he was educated “up North” in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, became a lawyer around 1797 and practiced law in Rhode Island.
He wound up back in South Carolina and for a while edited the Republican newspapers City Gazette and Weekly Carolina Gazette of Charleston. In 1803, Williams sold his share of the papers and moved to what then was called Darlington District to plant cotton.
He was elected to Congress in the first decade of the 1800s and again in the second decade, also serving in the War of 1812.
Williams was known in Washington as a maverick who favored limited government. As one account puts it: “When Williams first arrived in Washington, he was offered to have dinner with President Thomas Jefferson, but Williams refused because he felt that it might interfere with his independence of mind.”
That’s a true maverick. By all accounts, Williams was somewhat leery of government and the constraints it brought with it.
Williams died, in an accident, in 1830, while he was supervising construction of a bridge on the road to Georgetown.