Freed Ohio slave finally given burial rites

Associated Press

RAVENNA

When William Williams lived in the future McElrath Park subdivision in Ravenna Township, the freed slave took pride in being the community’s oldest resident.

“All my people in town know me,” Williams told the Evening Record in a 1951 interview.

Recently, a large crowd of people — including some who knew Williams and many who didn’t — came to pay tribute to the freed slave buried in Maple Grove Cemetery.

A group called the William Williams Workshop met to discuss the legacy of Williams, who was born into slavery in 1850 and lived in bondage into his teen years.

The group then drove to Maple Grove Cemetery to bless his grave, sing a song and read Scriptures.

The group’s next mission will be to raise money for a stone to mark Williams’ unmarked grave.

Williams died in 1952, at age 102, a free man for 87 years.

Marjorie Pagan, whose family owned Sprott’s store near McElrath, said Williams was a frequent customer. She noted that Williams was a big man, which might have intimidated her if not for his gentle demeanor.

“The two words I would use to describe him are calm and gentle,” she said. “He had every reason to be a man of violence and anger, but he didn’t. He didn’t.”

The Rev. Pamela Canzater Cheney, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Ravenna, learned of Williams from one of her parishioners, Priscilla Calanni.

Calanni, a former fourth-grade teacher, used to take her children to Maple Grove to visit Williams’ grave and to discuss what it must have been like to be born into slavery.

One of her students wrote that Williams’ story was a sad one and “I think he needed more freedom.”

Although the children frequently talked of raising money for a headstone, the campaign never got off the ground.

Cheney, who formed the group in February 2009, said she and the Rev. Melissa Carvill-Ziemer recently discussed the need to move the group beyond its focus on racism and to touch on deeper issues, such as intimidation.

She read an account from Williams’ 1951 interview, where he talked of working from before sunrise until after dark, and still said his master “treated us well.”

“This was a good master?” she said. “I want to know what a bad one is. How many of us have heard children say, ‘My parents hit me, but they love me.’ Are we really all that far removed from slavery? Are we?”

Although Williams had no children, his wife did, and the descendants of his wife also attended the ceremony.

Sheryl Smiley, whose mother was the stepgranddaughter of Williams, attended along with her siblings, Jackie Bell and Tobe Smiley. While all three are too young to remember Williams, they heard stories about him.

“He was a big, strong man,” Sheryl Smiley said. “He used to walk with his hands behind him.”

Cheney, Carvill-Ziemer and the Rev. Dan Caruso, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, did the readings at Williams’ grave, one of three known burial sites of freed slaves at Maple Grove. The graves of the other two, a husband and wife, are marked.

“His story is our story, and we seek to learn more about him, and more about each other,” Cheney said.