Jeremiah M. P. Williams (Adams County)
State Senate: 1870-1874, 1878-1880
Born: c. 1830 in North Carolina
Died: June 24, 1884 in Minorville neighborhood, Natchez, MS
Baptist minister, formerly enslaved. Listed on the 1870 census in Natchez with wife Nancy (m. 1865). According to his marriage certificate from the Freedmen’s Bureau, he had been married for fourteen years to a previous wife. Nancy, too, had been married and was a widow.
Williams gave his age as 39 on the 1870 census, but the sexton’s report of his death in 1884 says he was about 60, putting his birth c. 1824-1831. The 1870 census recorded his birthplace as North Carolina. I’ve been unable to find Williams on the 1880 census.
“In a widely circulated speech in 1871, State Senator Jeremiah M. P. Williams addressed the conflicting themes of factionalism, democracy, and black office holding. He warned of the growing power of the southern Democratic Party and implored his fellow citizens in Natchez to remain ‘true to one another.'”
(Justin Behrend, Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War, 2015)
This page was last updated on January 25, 2026.