Sampson Williams 1762-1841

Sampson Williams is remembered through a place that vanished. Williamsburg grew beside Fort Blount after the fort was abandoned around 1800 and served as the county seat of newly formed Jackson County from 1807 until 1819. The village is gone, and the Williams Cemetery, with the graves of Sampson and his wife Margaret, lies about 1,500 feet southwest of the fort site. A ferry nearby once connected the Smith's Bend peninsula with the Flynns Creek community across the river, and most of the bend is private farmland now.

What the plaque says

Sampson Williams 1762-1841 Sampson Williams is regarded as the founding father of Jackson County and is considered its first citizen. In a 1789 engagement with the Indians in the Cumberland settlement, Andrew Jackson was under Captain Williams' command. Later, he and Jackson became close friends. Williams was appointed sheriff of Davidson County on December 15, 1790. He operated a ferry at the crossing of the Cumberland. A commander of Fort Blount in late 1793, he served as state senator, built early roads, and established at least two schools.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Red Boiling Springs — 13 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 15 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 21 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Standing Stone State Park — 24 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.

More markers nearby

• Fort Blount — 3.7 mi
• Granville — 5.1 mi
• Orion Clemenes 1825-1897 — 8.3 mi
• Michaux's Discovery 1796 — 8.3 mi