4Williams Middleton was the fifth son of Mary Helen Hering and Governor Henry Middleton. Born in 1809 on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Williams attended school in England and then Paris when his parents and two older sisters went to Russia in 1820. He later joined his parents in St. Petersburg where he served as his father’s secretary in the U.S. legation. After his family’s return to the United States, he actively assisted his father in managing the Combahee River plantations, as well as Middleton Place. Upon his father’s death in 1846, Williams inherited Middleton Place and pursued the family’s interest in rice culture, carried out agricultural experiments, and further enhanced the Gardens with the introduction of azaleas (Azalea indica).
Along with his brothers John and Edward, Williams was named co-executor of his father’s estate. In addition to managing Middleton Place and other family properties, he was also responsible for seeing that his siblings’ interests, as outlined in their father’s will, were appropriately managed.
Although their late father had been a prominent member of the Union Party and younger brother Edward was a life-long United States Navy officer, in 1860 Williams and older brother John signed South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession that removed the state from the Union, leading to the Civil War.
Over-age for active military duty in the Civil War, Williams vigorously helped with the home front efforts, filling sandbags, providing supplies, and furnishing barbed wire for defense. He also contributed financially to the cause through the purchase of Confederate bonds. As Union troops advanced on South Carolina, he hid family valuables, including the Benjamin West painting of his grandparents and father and the Wood Nymph statue. Only days after the fall of Charleston, a detachment of the 56th New York Regiment occupied Middleton Place. On February 22, 1865, the Main House and flanker buildings were ransacked and burned, the ground strewn with books, paintings and other family treasures.
Williams was left nearly penniless at the close of the war because of his financial contributions to the Confederacy, loss of income from crops, emancipation of his enslaved workers, and destruction and seizure of property. He signed the Oath of Loyalty in 1865 and was eventually able to reclaim the family plantations and his Charleston house at #1 Meeting Street. With financial help from his sister, Eliza Middleton Fisher of Philadelphia, and with a small income from phosphate mining, timber and lumber sales, he managed to retain possession of Middleton Place. He repaired the South Flanker sufficiently to make it the post-civil war family home.
Williams Middleton married Susan Pringle Smith on January 11, 1849. The couple had two children, Elizabeth (Lilly), 1849-1915, and Henry (Hal) 1851-1932. Williams died in Greenville, SC, in 1883 and was interred in the family tomb at Middleton Place.
On Williams’ death, Middleton Place passed to his widow Susan, who made the necessary repairs to the south flanker after the earthquake of 1886. When she died in early 1900, their daughter Lilly inherited Middleton Place, though she never lived there as an adult. Lilly spent some time each year at Middleton Place overseeing improvements to the property and died, childless, in 1915. Her will stipulated the property was to go to her young cousin, the Charleston lawyer, John Julius Pringle Smith, a Middleton descendant through both Arthur, the Signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his sister, Henrietta.