Background
James D. Williams, the eldest of six children of George Williams, of English-Welsh Virginian stock, was born in Pickaway County, Ohio on January 16, 1808. In 1818 the family moved to a farm near Vincennes in Knox County, Indiana.
James D. Williams, the eldest of six children of George Williams, of English-Welsh Virginian stock, was born in Pickaway County, Ohio on January 16, 1808. In 1818 the family moved to a farm near Vincennes in Knox County, Indiana.
James grew up under pioneer conditions with very little schooling.
At his father's death in 1828 he assumed the support of the family.
In 1836 he purchased a section of land near Wheatland, and on it made his home for the rest of his life. He acquired a total of some four thousand acres, from which, together with a grist mill, a sawmill, and a pork packing plant, he accumulated "a handsome competence. "
Williams was active in local, state, and national Democratic organizations. In 1839 he became by election justice of the peace. He served five terms in the Indiana House of Representatives between 1843 and 1869, and three terms in the Senate between 1858 and 1873, sitting altogether in sixteen sessions of the General Assembly. Among the laws he sponsored, one allowed widows to hold small estates of deceased husbands without court action; another distributed a state sinking fund among counties for school funds. He worked for the improvement of the Wabash River to make it navigable, but opposed the retrocession of the Wabash and Erie Canal to the state.
He promoted the creation of a state board of agriculture, and was a member of it for sixteen years and president for four. He voted for a contingent war fund of $100, 000 for Gov. Oliver Perry Morton, but joined in his party's opposition to the administration and was branded a "Copperhead" by Republicans.
He was elected to the national House of Representatives in 1874 and in the session of 1875-76 was chairman of the committee on accounts. Both in the state legislature and in Congress he was insistent upon cutting down expenses to the last possible penny. This accorded with his peculiar attire, and the public came to know him as "Blue Jeans Williams. " At the Democratic state convention, April 19, 1876, two factions compromised on him, and he was unanimously nominated for governor against Godlove Stein Orth, later replaced by Gen. Benjamin Harrison, as the Republican candidate. Indiana was a pivotal state in the national presidential election, and the campaign was a famous one. Williams made a thorough canvass, especially in the rural districts, taking Daniel W. Voorhees with him as his spokesman at meetings. He was elected by a vote of 213, 219 to Harrison's 208, 080 and was inaugurated on January 8, 1877.
In the labor troubles of 1877 he refused at first to call out the National Guard but finally did so in time to prevent serious outbreaks. The present state capitol was provided for in his administration, begun in 1878, and completed in 1888, well within the amount appropriated ($2, 000, 000).
Williams died at Indianapolis shortly before the end of his term of office. He was buried in Walnut Grove Cemetery, near his home in Knox County.
Of great physical strength, six feet four inches in height and spare of build, he was a hard working as well as an expert and progressive farmer, excelling in raising both grain and stock. He retained pioneer habits, living largely on the products of his farm and wearing, even in Congress, homespun "blue jeans" woven from the fleece of his own flocks.
He was a conscientious, painstaking, self-reliant governor.
On Feburary 17, 1831, he married Nancy Huffman. Of their seven children three died in infancy.
