Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Sharp Williams (1854-1932) consist largely of correspondence and newspaper clippings for the years 1902-1924, with the bulk of the material dated after 1914. Family and business correspondence was not given to the Library. The collection is organized into four series: Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, State Correspondence, and Miscellany.
Williams served in the House of Representatives from 1893 to 1909 and in the Senate from 1911 to 1923, and the predominant subject of his papers is politics in Mississippi and the nation during the administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding. Correspondence with the White House, senators, congressmen, government agency executives, and officials and nonresidents of Mississippi is primarily concerned with military preparedness, women's suffrage, the League of Nations, disarmament, the Irish question, self-determination of nations, the currency bill, prohibition, Federal Trade Commission, Puerto Rico, Armenia, war debts, and patronage. The papers include considerable correspondence with Woodrow Wilson, whom Williams greatly admired.
The State Correspondence series consists primarily of correspondence with residents of Mississippi concerning government employment, state politics, war risk insurance claims, government allotments, claims against the government, veteran's pensions and benefits, and appointments to the military service academies. Much of the constituent correspondence was written by or addressed to Williams's congressional office clerk, J. M. Burlew. In the Miscellany series are Armenian relief petitions, biographical and genealogical material, Haiti trade reports, and newspaper clippings and other printed matter.
Prominent among Williams's correspondents are Newton D. Baker, Bernard M. Baruch, William E. Borah, Nicholas Murray Butler, Henry De Lamar Clayton, Charles W. Eliot, William C. Gorgas, Herbert Hoover, Charles Evans Hughes, Cordell Hull, David Starr Jordan, Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), William G. McAdoo, A. Mitchell Palmer, George Foster Peabody, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elihu Root, William Howard Taft, Oscar W. Underwood, and Leonard Wood.