Larry Williams' Ancestors

Robert Carlton "Carl" Williams, left, was a native of Webster County, Kentucky. He was the second son of Thomas Jackson Williams, who was born 1862 and died 1892 in Webster County, and Mary Alice Dorris, who was born abt 1859 Hopkins County, Kentucky and died 1932 in Akron, Ohio. He was the grandfather of "Larry" Williams, who contributed this material.

Carl was a fourth grader in 1892 when his father died at age thirty. His mother managed to find jobs for Carl and his brother Thomas at the Black Diamond Mine in Providence. These jobs consisted of helping with the mules that were used to haul equipment and men in and out of the mines.

Carl didn't finish his schooling but his sister Prudy taught him; Carl and Prudy were very close their entire lives. Prudy was named after their grandmother, Prudence Edmondson. Times were tough for the Williams family and in 1910 Carl's mother moved the family to McHenry, Kentucky, which is in Ohio County.

Carl, wanting to find different work, left home with a friend named William Hodge and went to St. Louis. For a short time Carl and William performed with LeVan and Dorris, a vaudeville group with a Kentucky connection. Carl's mother was a Dorris and for a time about 1850, Carl's grandfather, Samuel Williams, had lived and farmed with the Marion C. Dorris family. Carl and William performed a buck and wing dance to feed themselves until something better came along. According to Larry Williams, his granddad could still entertain his grandkids with that dance in 1950.

In St. Louis Carl and William learned about card sharks and pickpockets; this was not like the little farm and the mining town of Providence. Door-to-door housing and large boats on the river were all new things to see and enjoy.

In October 1910 a Navy recruiter hired Carl and William to take a picturesque cruise on the battleship USS Kansas. Almost immediately they boarded a train from St. Louis to Norfolk, Virginia. In Norfolk the young recruits were housed in the USS Franklin, an old converted troop ship, which had been built in 1850. After being retired the ship had its sail masts removed and troop housing was installed above and below deck. It was said the troops aboard were about equal in number to the rats. All said, the Kentucky boys had an adventurous time in Norfolk and there was certainly more excitement than in Providence.

There was little training by the navy as the men were hired to work and not recruited to serve. This was peacetime and they needed workers not sailors. Finally that spring the USS Kansas put in at Norfolk in deep water. On May 3rd, 1911, Carl Williams and William Hodge became what were called in the ship's log as part of "A draft of men". They were listed as boarding from the USS Franklin. It's interesting that the Kansas sailed out of Norfolk via Hampton Rhoads, the route to the Atlantic Ocean. That was the same route Larry's grandmother Ermie Newman's ancestors had entered this country from England in 1641.

Carl Williams told his grandchildren he was on the USS Kansas for a week before he found out more about the picturesque cruise they would be taking. The first Monday found the ship anchored off a buoy southeast of Cape Henry, Virginia. By May 10, 1911, according to the ship's log, the Kansas was en route to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was about this time that Carl and William realized why they needed no training to be in the Navy. Their job was to shovel coal into boilers below deck in about 110 degrees of heat; their job titles were "coal passers". This type of labor being so strenuous, they did get free time on the deck for socializing and doing other ship's tasks. Carl always had positive memories about this cruise.

The USS Kansas and other US Naval ships of this era were all part of "The Great White Fleet", which had participated in a 43,000 mile, 14-month circumnavigation in 1907, 1908 and 1909 that included 20 port calls on six continents; it is widely considered one of the greatest peacetime achievements of the US Navy. You can read more about The Great White Fleet online.

When Carl and William arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark in May 1911, shore leave started. According to Carl, shore leave in Denmark was certainly a new experience. "The people dressed funny and you couldn't understand them at all. But then again, things were not all that different - you could still buy tobacco for your pipe, or a piece of fruit for some small amount of money the merchant would take out of the palm of your hand. The local inns would still serve you too much beer, which they called ale. Too much ale seemed to be a fix for the language barrier." The boys found out you can make friends with people you can't understand and the pretty ladies would almost always return a smile for a smile.

And so it was that Carl Williams of Webster County, Kentucky saw sites he never would have seen if he hadn't gone to St. Louis. He had sailed from Denmark to Stockholm, Sweden, then on to Kiel, Germany, and finally to Russia. Back home in the United States, Carl resigned from his shipboard job and boarded a train back to Kentucky. He had stories to tell that the local folks would never believe!