James Williams was born in Virginia in 1740, married Mary Wallace in 1762, and had eight children. After moving with his family to Caswell County, N.C., and then to present-day Laurens County, S.C., in 1773, he served in the First Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775, in the Second Provincial Congress later that year, and on the Committee on Safety, which protected the South Carolina backcountry from Cherokee Indian raids. As a colonel in the South Carolina militia, he led his Little River Regiment to victory at Musgrove Mill and fought at Kings Mountain, where combined Patriot militia regiments from North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Overmountain riflemen from present-day Tennessee, and Williams's regiment surrounded and totally defeated the enemy on October 7, 1780. Williams's regiment was the only unit from South Carolina, and his knowledge of the terrain, along with timely information from Thomas Kerr, a disabled soldier of the Little River Regiment, helped make the victory possible. British commander Patrick Ferguson was killed, Williams was mortally wounded and died on October 8, 1780, and Thomas Jefferson later viewed Kings Mountain as "the turning point" in the War for Independence. Williams's teenage sons, Daniel and Joseph, died at Hayes Station on November 17, 1781.