Winfield Edwin Williams (September 26, 1849-June 5, 1932). W.E. Williams, late of Ty Ty, Ga., was born in Berrien county, Ga., where is now the town of Sparks, which grew up on his father's plantation immediately after the Georgia Southern & Florida R.R. was put through from Valdosta, Ga., to Macon, Ga. His parents were Eld. Ezekiel James Williams, a pioneer Primitive Baptist minister of South Georgia, and Flora McDermid Williams. On December 8, 1870, W.E. Williams was married to Katherine Gibbs of Worth county, Ga. (now Tift county). To this union were born six children: Ezekiel James, Elizabeth Alice (Mrs. George D. Godard), Martha Ann (Mrs. F.B. Pickett), Flora Ellen (Mrs. A.E. Nelson), Franklin Edwin, and Thomas V. His wife died 01 December 1927; his son Ezekiel James died March 7, 1929, followed by Mrs. A.E. Nelson on 13 May 1929, and Franklin Edwin on 25 April 1932. After a residence of about five years in Berrien county, in 1875 or '76, the subject of this sketch moved, with his wife and three children, to Ty Ty, Ga., soon after the Brunswick and Western R.R. was built from Brunswick, Ga. to Albany, Ga. Here he gradually established mercantile, turpentine, grist mill, saw mill, and cotton gin business interests, besides running a small farm, his wife never tiring of rendering all the assistance possible in his undertakings, and both dedicating their lives early to the cause of their Master in the Primitive Baptist Church, and supporting with most earnest endeavor every move for the development and uplift of the community life commercially, educationally and religiously. For years the public school term was limited to three months each year. Realizing that this meager term should be lengthened, W.E. Williams assumed full responsibility for a six-months term and financed the building of a suitable schoolhouse on his own land, hiring the teacher himself but collecting tuition, of course. Finally the management of the school was taken over by town authorities. As a mark of respect and appreciation for his pioneer services to education in the town, he was accorded the honor of breaking the dirt for the present, handsome school building at Ty Ty. In January, 1890, realizing again that his older children must have higher educational advantages at once, and also pressed by general economic depression, he moved to the then new town of Cordele, Ga., but finding this school not sufficiently organized as yet, he moved his family to Barnesville, Ga., for the educational advantages of Gordon Institute, in September. After three years and four months' residence in Barnesville, he moved back to Ty Ty for one year, then to Tifton, Ga., for one year, and again back to the old home at Ty Ty, where he resumed his farm and mercantile business for several years, and where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in 1932; source: History of Worth County, Georgia: for the first eighty years, 1854-1934 by Lillian Martin Grubbs; Chapter XX. Family history and genealogy, p. 327, 328.