Merrill McGrath Williams, 1821-1900, Spring Hill Cemetery, Harrodsburg, Mercer County, Kentucky

from The Harrodsburg Sayings, Mercer County, Kentucky

Wednesday, August 1, 1900

The community suffered the loss of one of its most respected and honored citizens in the death of Mr. Merrill McGrath Williams, Sr., last Friday morning at 3 o’clock.  For several weeks he had been ill of grippe, which developed into an abscess on the liver, that being the immediate cause of his death.  He was born in Madison County, about seventy-nine years ago, but his parents moved to Mercer when he was still a boy.  Nearly his whole life, therefore, was spent among the people who paid their last tribute to him Saturday morning at 10 o’clock.  The simple burial service, conducted by Dr. W. O. Goodloe, was held at his late residence, on Lexington Avenue, and interment took place in Spring Hill Cemetery.  There was not one who knew him but did not feel a pang that this childlike, unobtrusive christian life had closed.  Full of charity and loving kindness towards his fellow man, leading an upright, open life, he needs no eulogy beyond the respect paid to his memory.  His wife and one son, Mr. J. B. Williams, survive him.  The pall bearers were his fellow officers in the Presbyterian Church, in which he had labored devotedly since early manhood.  The brothers and sisters out of a family of nine who survive to mourn him are:  Mrs. Alice Vanarsdall, of this county; Mr. Joel Williams of the state of Texas; Mr. W. T. Williams, of this county, and a half-sister, Mrs. Rebekah Vanarsdall, wife of Mr. David Vanarsdall, of this city.