Thomas E. Williams' Silverstreet

A true American family saga, from slavery in South Carolina to freedom in Baltimore. In 1837, a seven-year-old girl named Mariah is forced from her mother's arms on a Virginia plantation and sold away. She ends up at Silverstreet, the South Carolina cotton plantation of John Hopkins Williams, the man who will one day father her son. From that beginning comes a family whose story spans nearly two centuries. Butler Henry Williams, born enslaved to a mother who was owned by his own father, comes of age as the Civil War tears the South apart. Freedom brings new struggles: building a life in the shadow of the plantation, raising a large family through Reconstruction and the hardships of Jim Crow, and finally joining the Great Migration north to Baltimore, where new generations work, worship, love, and rise. Originally written in 1983 by Thomas Edgar Williams, a great-grandson of Mariah, Silverstreet was born from his determination to preserve his family's history before it was lost to time. Drawing on family memories, interviews, court records, and his own return journey to the land where it all began, he told the story of ordinary people who endured extraordinary circumstances. More than forty years later, his grandson, Byron L. Turner, has restored and republished this treasured work. This second edition includes: - Expanded and new chapters - Restored and enhanced family photographs spanning more than a century - A new epilogue about the Williams family today Silverstreet is a story of struggle, sacrifice, resilience, and hope, and a powerful testament to the voices of those who came before.