Williams College

Williams College is a small, private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. As of 2004, the undergraduate enrollment was approximately 2,000 students. In 1834 the first non-secret fraternity, Delta Upsilon, was founded on its campus. Fraternities were phased out beginning in 1962. Coeducation was adopted in 1970. There are three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences, social sciences), 24 departments, 31 majors, and two small masters programs in art history and development economics. The college also sponsors academic programs at Mystic Seaport, Oxford University, and in New York City. The student:faculty ratio is 8:1. The academic year consists of two four-course semesters plus a one-course Winter Study term during the month of January. Williamstown is located in the Berkshires in northwestern Massachusetts, 145 miles (233 km) from Boston and 165 miles (266 km) from New York City. The College sits at the foot of Mount Greylock. When Henry David Thoreau visited in 1844, he remarked that "It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain."

History

When Colonel Ephraim Williams of the Massachusetts militia---and a member of a prominent landowning family---was killed at the Battle of Lake George in 1755, his will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided that the town change its name to Williamstown. The will was unsigned and undated, and provided additional stipulations, such as the town remaining in Massachusetts rather than becoming part of New York as some residents wanted, before the bequest could be disbursed. this involved a delay of over 35 years until, in 1791, the Williamstown Free School opened. Not long after the school opened, the trustees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to a tuition-based college. The legislature agreed and in 1793, Williams College was chartered.

Related Topics:
Colonel Ephraim Williams - Battle of Lake George - 1755 - 1791 - 1793

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In 1806 a student prayer meeting gave rise to the American Foreign Mission Movement. In August of that year five students met in the maple grove of Sloan's Meadow to pray. A thunderstorm drove them to the shelter of a haystack, and the fervor of the ensuing meeting inspired them to take the gospel abroad. The students went on to build the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first American organization to send missionaries overseas. The Haystack Monument near Mission Park on the Williams Campus commemorates the meeting.

Related Topics:
1806 - American Foreign Mission Movement - American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

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By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and fifty-eight students, and was in serious financial trouble. On November 10, 1818, nine of the twelve Williams College trustees voted for a resolution stating that:

Related Topics:
1815 - November 10 - 1818

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"Resolved, that it is expedient to remove Williams College to some more central part of the State whenever sufficient funds can be obtained to defray the necessary expenses incurred and the losses sustained by removal, and to secure the prosperity of the college, and when a fair prospect shall be presented of obtaining for the institution the united support and patronage of the friends of literature and religion in the western part of the Commonwealth, and when the General Court shall give their assent to the measure."

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In February 1820, a petition to the Massachusetts legislature to this effect was defeated, and the college was not moved.

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In 1821, Williams College President Zephaniah Swift Moore, who had accepted his position believing that the college would move east, abandoned Williams. He took fifteen students with him, and assumed the first Presidency of Amherst College. Story has it that Moore also took portions of the Williams College library. Though plausible, this account is unsubstantiated, and was declared false in 1995 by Williams College President Harry C. Payne. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.

Related Topics:
1821 - Zephaniah Swift Moore - Amherst College - 1995

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Williams played Amherst College in the first intercollegiate baseball game in 1859 and continued on to pioneer many areas of academia and education. Williams' website has a list of "firsts" and a more detailed history. Notable among these, Williams was the first American college or university to feature caps and gowns at graduation.

Related Topics:
Amherst College - 1859

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Presidents of Williams College

• Ebenezer Fitch, 1793-1815
• Zephaniah Swift Moore, 1815-1821
• Edward Dorr Griffin, 1821-1836
• Mark Hopkins, 1836-1872
• Paul Ansel Chadbourne, 1872-1881
• Franklin Carter, 1881-1901
• John Haskell Hewitt, 1901-1902
• Henry Hopkins, 1902-1908
• Harry Augustus Garfield, 1908-1934
• Tyler Dennett, 1934-1937
• James Phinney Baxter, 1937-1961
• John Edward Sawyer, 1961-1973
• John Wesley Chandler, 1973-1985
• Francis Christopher Oakley, 1985-1993
• Harry C. Payne, 1994-1999
• Carl W. Vogt, 1999-2000
• Morton Owen Schapiro, 2000-present

Commencement Speakers

• 2005 Thomas L. Friedman
• 2004 David Halberstam
• 2003 Dr. Eric Lander
• 2002 Morris Dees
• 2001 Robert Rubin
• 2000 George Mitchell
• 1999 Christopher Reeve
• 1998 Yo-Yo Ma
• 1997 Grace Paley
• 1996 George H. W. Bush