Williams College is a private, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Williams was the second institution of higher education in Massachusetts, after Harvard University. Williams was founded by Colonel Ephraim Williams, a militia leader killed in 1755 in the French and Indian War. The colonel’s will provided for the establishment of a “free school” in western Massachusetts, where he had commanded a detachment of militia. The school opened in 1791 as a men’s college, and in 1793 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts incorporated it as Williams College.
In 1821, the college president, Zephaniah Swift Moore, and several teachers and students left Williamstown because they believed it was too isolated. They moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, and established Amherst College. Since that time, Amherst and WIlliams have maintained a tradition of rivalry.
The distinguished educator Mark Hopkins began his career as a teacher at Williams and served as the college’s president from 1836 to 1872. The Hopkins Observatory at Williams, dating from 1838, is the oldest astronomical observatory in the United States.
The first intercollegiate baseball game was played between Williams and Amherst in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1859. A chess match between the two colleges followed the baseball game. The Williams class of 1887 was the first graduating class in the United States to wear caps and gowns. The college copied the tradition from European universities to ensure that rich and poor students would be equally well-dressed at graduation. Williams began to admit women students in 1970.
Notable alumni of Williams have included novelist Dominick Dunne; Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field; President James A. Garfield; filmmakers John Frankenheimer, Elia Kazan, and John Sayles; psychologist G. Stanley Hall; Richard Helms, head of the Central Intelligence Agency; composer Stephen Sondheim; baseball executives George Steinbrenner and Francis (Fay) Vincent, Jr.; and author and senator John J. Ingalls.
The college’s website at https://www.williams.edu/ offers additional information.
