This website is to share information that I've gathered while researching the Williams family in Greenbrier County. If you have any information on any of the people in these files, please email me (greg@gregsmith.info) and share what you know. I would like for this to be a communal resource to help everyone researching these families.

Surnames I'm researching : Williams, McCoy, Ocheltree, Blake

Pages 103-105

THE HOUSES OF THE TUCKWILLER DAUGHTERS

John Williams House (Catherine Tuckwiller)

The little village of Williamsburg lies in a valley between Culverson and Sinking Creek. It was named in 1833 for Thomas Williams, its first settler, who was of Welsh descent. Mr. Williams suffered the horrible fate of being scalped by the Indians, and his children were carried off as captives. John Williams, a descendant born in 1794, was a man of much property, owning at one time an extensive acreage in the county. He was once proprietor of Blue Sulphur Springs and was also one of the founders and builders of Alleghany College at that place - a school whose flourishing career was only well under way when the Civil War came to end its short life.

Mr. Williams was seven years sheriff of the county - and was interested in public enterprises. He was particularly interested in bringing the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway through this region. Many plans were made and there was much discussion of various routes as well as a proposed canal. In the expectation that the railway would pass through the Williamsburg section, Mr. Williams in 1837 erected a three-story brick house a mile north of the village. Here, if the railroad plans materialized, he could operate a tavern. The plans for a railroad materialized very splendidly, the Virginia Board of Public Works having authorized its construction across the Alleghanies in 1855, but the railroad was many miles from Williamsburg.

Mr. Williams' son, Bolliver, having inherited the property, sold it to David Tuckwiller, who in turn gave it to his daughter, Catherine (Mrs. Wallace Rader). Their daughter married Emery Knight, the father of the present owner, Remington Knight.

This house now appears conspicuously tall in relation to the level farm land surrounding it, though when constructed, it created a very different picture. Then the bottom story was half underground, a door at one end, and a terrace in front, with a columned double portico extending from the second to the third floor, reached by a long flight of steps - the effect being that of a two-story house of the type of "Mountain Home." After the hopes for a tavern had fled, the interior of the third floor was not completed, and the stairs to it were removed.

The next change, some years later, was to take away the portico and columns and to excavate around the walls of the basement rooms, leveling off the terrace. The entire brick walls of the basement then being exposed, the half windows were lengthened and an entrance door cut in the center. A long porch, with cement floor directly on the ground, was then built as the main entrance to the house, and a corrseponding porch replacing the small portico, was built for the floor above - with a railing, however, and wood flooring instead of cement.

All of these alterations have done strange things to the house, and, before hearing the explanation, one stands hopelessly befogged, trying to figure out what has happened to the place. Seeing the present entrance with its very ordinary front door on the ground floor, and the very good doorway with box lock, paneling, and glass side lights on the second floor, is just too much, and makes one rage to put it all back the way it was at first.

This was a well-built house, its solid brick walls eighteen inches thick. It exhibits a number of good architectural details. There is a deep outside cornice of brick. Surprisingly, the same cornice appears on a two-story brick building near by, whose large outside brick chimney at each ends indicated that it was used as the kitchen, with servants' quarters in the rooms above.

The woodwork in the large house is very good, the doors on the main floor being wide and paneled, and the casings generous and strong. Several doors have the original box locks. In the room to the right, the master room, there is a cupboard with solid doors, a chair rail around the wall, and a well-carved mantel. The inside chimneys all have seperate flues for each room, and are said to "draw" perfectly, insuring winter comfort, a luxery in those days. There is a second large square room in the front of the house. An unusual feature, the long hall runs the width of the house rather than the depth. A small room opens from one end, and the stairs rise at the opposite end. The stairs to the basement, now the first floor, open into a similar wide hall below. This hall joins not only the same small end room, but also two other very enormous rooms containing large fireplaces and mantels. These were intended as the tap-rooms for the men patrons of the proposed tavern. The ceilings here are low and the floor boards wide, but naturally they are not of such good workmanship as on the original "first" floor above.