| David Marshal Williams was born in Cumberland County, North Carolina eldest of seven children. As a young boy, he worked on his family's farm. He dropped out of school after eighth grade and began work in a blacksmith shop, enjoyed a short stint in Navy, but was discharged because he was underage. After returning from the Navy, he spent a semester at Blackstone Military Academy before being expelled. In 1918, he married Margaret Cooke and they later had one child, David Marshall, Jr. Williams worked for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, but on the side he had an illegal distillery near Godwin, North Carolina. During a raid on this still on July 22, 1921, a deputy sheriff Alfred Jackson Pate was shot and killed, and Williams was charged with first degree murder. The trial ended in a hung jury, but Williams decided to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second degree murder. He was given a 20-30 year sentence. While serving time at the Caledonia State Prison Farm in Halifax County, North Carolina the superintendent, HT Peoples, noted his mechanical aptitude and allowed him access to the prison's machine shop where he demonstrated a genius for fashioning replacement parts for the guards' firearms from pieces of scrap automobile parts. In prison, he would save paper and pencils and stay up late at night drawing plans for various firearms. His extraordinary skills in the machine shop permitted him to stay ahead of his assignments and allowed him time for his own hobby. He began ... |
