William T. Jones, III was born and reared on the land adjacent to and southwest of this bridge, where his ancestors settled in the late 1750's. His family included many civic-minded and patriotic doctors and lawyers, among them a Senator, a Legislator, a Mayor, a Judge, a Sheriff, a Brigadier General, a Colonel, three Captains in the State Militia and Confederate Army, and one Captain in the American Revolution. He strove to uphold their legacy and owned several hundred acres that had remained in the Jones name since the seventeen hundreds. After his mother died when he was four years old, he was boarding and working his way through high school by age fifteen. In 1940 he thumbed rides to the University of South Carolina and persuaded officials to let him register on credit. There he served as President of his class, Chairman of the Student Faculty Committee, a member of KSK, three years on Student Council, two years on Honor Board, President of ODK, Chairman of Awards Day, President of the Veterans' Association, and President of the Student Body. During World War Two, he volunteered for the Navy and received a commission, serving as Executive Officer of LSM 108. After law school, he served four years in the South Carolina House of Representatives, thirty-two years as Solicitor of the South Carolina Eighth Judicial Circuit, and fifty years as an attorney. When he retired as Solicitor, he had not lost a single case in over fifty years in any one of the four counties of his Circuit. His record as Solicitor was known statewide, and as an attorney he never charged a penny for consultation, never sent a bill out of his office, and was reputed to be one of the finest courtroom lawyers in the Southeast.