Andrew Gomer Williams Post Office Building

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, there are few times in our lives when we really get to honor true heroes. Today is one of those days that we have by naming a post office after him.

I am going to read through this document that I have to give you an idea of just who Captain Andrew Gomer Williams was.

Now, this is at a dedication. It starts off with: ``Monuments are as old as our race and all along the history of the dim and dusty age down to the bright and joyous present we have been perpetuating the memory of heroic men.''

These elegant words, so very appropriate this morning, are not mine but were the actual words of Andrew Gomer Williams, whose monument we gather here this morning to dedicate.

He delivered them in a speech on September 11, 1889, on the Gettysburg Battlefield during ceremonies dedicating the monument to his regiment, the 63rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, who fought during the famous battle on July 1 through July 3 in 1863.

Much like they gathered on that field 132 years ago, we gather here today on this field to perpetuate the memory of a heroic man.

Ironically, Williams, who fought for the Union, was born in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy on September 8, 1840, to a Welsh immigrant father and an eastern Maryland mother.

His family moved from Richmond to Pittsburgh in 1847 and from Pittsburgh to Etna 1 year later. The recipient of very little education, Andrew Williams went to work as a nail cutter in the local factory at the young age of 10. He was a fourth grader.

Maybe it was the sense of patriotism that swelled in Andrew Williams' heart, or maybe it was wanting to escape the dullness of factory work for the great unknown adventure of war, but regardless of the reason, we do know that at age 21, in 1861, Mr. Williams was helping to raise three companies of men to become part of the newly created 63rd Pennsylvania Volunteers and leave the smoky city of Pittsburgh for the battlefields of his native South.

He was elected captain of Company E but declined the honor and the rank to initially serve as their third sergeant when their 3 years of service began on September 9, 1861.

He was promoted to 2nd lieutenant on the field during the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862, and then in the spring of 1863 he was promoted to the rank of captain of Company E of the 63rd Pennsylvania Volunteers. He fought in over a dozen battles and was wounded four times including at the Charles City Crossroads on June 30, 1862, and again at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862.

1863 would find Williams leading his men at the Battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. During the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, Williams was thought to have been mortally wounded after being struck in the left temple by a Confederate minie' ball and left for dead. Miraculously, he was found barely alive 4 days later on the Wilderness battlefield.

According to his great-granddaughter Mary Caroline Baker Hunt, Williams' life was saved by falling wounded inside the muddy boundaries of a spring with the muddy soil saving his temple wound from infection and providing him with much-needed water. He was mustered out with the rest of his regiment on August 6, 1864. But Williams would carry the external scars from the near fatal wound for the rest of his life.

After his return home to Etna, he was unable to find work for the next 3 years due to his wounds. He entered Duff's Business College in Pittsburgh to become a bookkeeper and also read law at home.

In 1868, following his father's death in a boiler explosion at the Fort Pitt Foundry, he was forced to return to cutting nails in the Etna rolling mill to help support his family while continuing his law studies at night. Besides his father's tragic death, Williams, throughout his life, experienced the deaths of 13 members of his family by explosions, railroad accidents, burnings, and drowning.

In spite of all the personal and family trauma, Andrew G. Williams, marched on and came to Butler in 1875, and upon being admitted to the Butler bar the following year, immediately formed a partnership with Alexander Mitchell. This partnership would last until Mitchell's death 40 years later.

During these four decades together, the men claimed to have never had an argument or ever having signed a lease for their office on the Diamond with their word as their bond. The only day in the entire history of their practice they did not open was when both men's Civil War regiments were holding reunions on the same date in Pittsburgh. The two lawyers closed up shop every day at precisely 4:45. It was said that people along their walking route home could set their watches by their passing.

The house Andrew Williams came home to each night he built himself in 1887 for his second wife and three sons and daughter and for his three children from his deceased first wife.

Williams' military service in the Civil War continued to play an important role in his life with his membership in the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR, a Civil War veterans' group, and contributing his time to help those survivors scarred by the effects of the war. He helped Civil War soldier spouses whose husbands had served and had died to get them the benefits that they deserved.

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. He also volunteered serving on the Board of Directors of the Civil War Orphans' Home that was located on Butler's Institute Hill from 1867 until moving to Mercer, Pennsylvania, in 1905.

Outside of his legal practice and his Civil War-related activities, Mr. Williams served one term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and 4 years in the Pennsylvania State Senate. He also served for 20 years as the choir director of Butler's First Methodist Church and rose to the rank of Grand Commander, Knights of the Templar of the State of Pennsylvania in the Masons.

After a full life devoted to his Nation, his church, his community, and--most importantly--his family, Andrew Gomer Williams died in his North McKean Street home on April 6, 1923, from pneumonia at the age of 83 at 10:40 that morning. Fittingly, for a man who had been a soldier in the Civil War, his funeral and burial were held on April 9, the same day, only 58 years earlier, that Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Confederate Army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at a place called Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Now, the finish to this speech is not mine. But I think it is so relevant as to where we are today. Allow me to conclude my speech today the same as it began with the eloquent words spoken at Gettysburg by Andrew Gomer Williams well over a century ago.

Mr. Williams said:

We have met again on this field after so many years to perpetuate the memory and render our faint and feeble tribute of praise to the valor of those Pennsylvania soldiers.

Especially at this time in our history, these are the heroes we should be naming buildings and Post Offices with. It has taken a long time to get to this point.

Madam Chair, I thank you for working together on this.

I do hope people listen to these words. These are the true heroes of America. These should be the examples that we all try to live by today. In a country that is getting too far apart and needs to get back together, this guy is a hero. This guy deserves as much time as we can give him.

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