Carrington Williams

In the late 1990s, as the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites and the original Civil War Trust struggled to co-exist in their shared mission of preservation, Richmond lawyer Carrington Williams (1919-2002) was a respected and likeable voice of reason who was instrumental in facilitating their merger in 1999. Williams, the APCWS chairman, was elected chairman of the new Civil War Preservation Trust (now the American Battlefield Trust). During the CWPT’s difficult first year, Williams worked closely with President Jim Lighthizer to buy the core of the Shenandoah Valley’s threatened Cross Keys battlefield, where today a Trust-installed interpretive site is dedicated in his memory. A veteran of World War II, Williams was founding chairman of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, a board member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1966 to 1970 and 1972 to 1978.