George Washington WILLIAMS

G. W. WILLIAMS joined Captain Pratt's 10th Texas Artillery in the spring of 1863 at Jefferson, TX and served throughout the Civil War.  After the war he lived in Leon Co.  In late 1868, the Jacob Walker LEE family moved to Leon Co. from Newton Co., MS with the youngest 6 of his 13 children and settled near his sister, Polly Lee GRAHAM, a widower raising her two orphaned grandchildren.  The oldest of these 6 children was a beautiful young widow, Addie Lee TYSON, and her toddler son Thomas.  There had been an epidemic of some disease raging through the community where Addie and her first husbnad Mr. Tyson lived.  Her husband was helping care for the sick and dying neighbors, when he became ill himself.  Realizing that he had the dreaded disease and that his chance for survival was slim, his main thought was to save his wife and baby.  He returned to the front yard of their home, called to Adeline, and told her to take the baby and leave by the back door and not to come back.  She did as he requested.  He died, but she and their baby were spared and they came to Leon Co. with her parents when her parents and younger siblings moved from Newton Co., MS.

G.W. and Addie married in 1869 and their first child was born in Leon Co. in 1870 before Addie's parents moved on to the area of Cotton Gin in Freestone Co. in 1871 to be closer to her mother's BLAKELY siblings.  G. W. and Addie went with them and settled in the Streetman area right on the Navarro Co. line near the community of Birdston.  Therefore, as Addie later testified before the Department of the Interior, G.W. and Addie only lived in Leon Co. for about two years after Addie moved to Leon Co.