How did the McWilliams community in Wilcox County get its name?

Bethel Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church at Oak Hill.

A couple of months ago I wrote a pair of columns that described the McWilliams Cemetery, which was recently added to Alabama’s Historic Cemetery Register. During the past week, I received an e-mail from a reader who wanted to know how the McWilliams community got its name.

That was a question that I’d never really considered, so I had to do a little digging to find the answer. Here’s what I learned.

According to a book called “Place Names in Alabama” by Virginia O. Foscue, McWilliams was probably named for the family of Evander Tennant McWilliams, who was named the community’s first postmaster when the post office was established there in 1900. According to postal records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., Evander was appointed as the McWilliams postmaster on Oct. 6, 1900. He was 30 years old at the time.

From there, I checked another book called “The Heritage of Wilcox County,” which was published in 2002. That volume on the county’s history said that the McWilliams name was “derived from the respected McWilliams family, who were the land owners before the town was located.” That book also noted that McWilliams owed much of its early growth to its location along the Selma & Pensacola Division of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

I also ran across another source, the 1910 United States Census, which indicated that McWilliams was officially incorporated as a town, complete with a mayor, aldermen and a town marshal, in 1901. However, about three decades later, sometime in the 1930s, the town disincorporated and reverted back to the unincorporated community that it is today.

I dug a little deeper and learned that Evander T. McWilliams was born at Oak Hill on Sept. 18, 1870 to Edward Collier McWilliams and Joyce Clopton McWilliams. Edward, the father, was born in South Carolina in 1831 and died at the age of 44 at Oak Hill in 1876. Joyce, the mother, who apparently remarried, outlived her first husband Edward by 31 years, passing away in July 1907.

Evander, a few months before he became the McWilliams postmaster, married Katherine Galliard McWilliams in Mobile on June 6, 1900. She passed away in 1907, the same year as Evander’s mother, apparently during childbirth as she shares her grave with an unnamed infant son. Katherine preceded her husband Evander in death by 12 years. Evander died relatively young, like his father, passing away at the age of 48 on Jan. 1, 1919.

Ironically, Evander and most of his family are not buried in the historic McWilliams Cemetery. Instead, Evander is buried alongside his wife and parents in the Bethel Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery at Oak Hill. (As far as I could tell, the only McWilliams buried in the McWilliams Cemetery is Frances Mable “Fannie” McWilliams, who passed away in 1944.)

In the end, I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of the rich history of the McWilliams family and the McWilliams community. If any readers out there have any information they’d like to share about this pioneer Wilcox County family and historic community, please let me know. I’d be especially interested to see a list of the town’s early mayors and other town officials.