[1] He grew up in a family that included his grandfather, Samuel Scott, and his five siblings, Henry, Hiram, Wilson, Ann, and Jane.
[4][1] After Nellie died in 1871 due to complication with Jessie's childbirth, Scott married his second wife, Lizzineky Jenkins of Massac County on April 22, 1872 in the town of Metropolis.
[2] Scott ran for City Marshall of Cairo in 1871 and received around 30% of the Republican votes (which was almost the entire African American voter population at the time), but he did not win.
[2] While many histories have erroneously proclaimed George Edwin Taylor the first African American presidential nominee put forward by the NNLP, it was in fact William Thomas Scott.
[3][1][2] Despite multiple arrests for bootlegging and running houses of prostitution, he remained popular to the people of Cairo as an activist and a journalist.