James Williams, born in Virginia in 1740, married Mary Wallace in 1762, and they had eight children before moving first to Caswell County, N.C., and then in 1773 to present-day Laurens County, S.C. 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, a military group that 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 Little River Regiment met British forces on October 7, 1780; his regiment was the only unit from South Carolina. Williams's knowledge of the terrain, along with timely information on the enemy's strength and mountaintop position from Thomas Kerr, a disabled soldier of the Little River Regiment, helped the Patriots surround and totally defeat the enemy. British commander Patrick Ferguson was killed, Williams was mortally wounded and died on October 8, 1780, and his teenage sons Daniel and Joseph died at Hayes Station on November 17, 1781. Thomas Jefferson regarded Kings Mountain as the turning point in the War for Independence.