Williams College

History

When Colonel Ephraim Williams of the Massachusetts militia 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.

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.

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:

"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."

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

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 Payne. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.

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.

Presidents of Williams College

1. Ebenezer Fitch, 1793-1815
2. Zephaniah Swift Moore, 1815-1821
3. Edward Dorr Griffin, 1821-1836
4. Mark Hopkins, 1836-1872
5. Paul Ansel Chadbourne, 1872-1881
6. Franklin Carter, 1881-1901
7. John Haskell Hewitt, 1901-1902
8. Henry Hopkins, 1902-1908
9. Harry Augustus Garfield, 1908-1934
10. Tyler Dennett, 1934-1937
11. James Phinney Baxter, 1937-1961
12. John Edward Sawyer, 1961-1973
13. John Wesley Chandler, 1973-1985
14. Francis Christopher Oakley, 1985-1993
15. Harry C. Payne, 1994-1999
16. Carl W. Vogt, 1999-2000
17. Morton Owen Schapiro, 2000-present
    

    Distinguishing features

    School colors and origins thereof

The story goes that at the Williams-Harvard baseball game in 1869, spectators, watching from carriages, had trouble telling the teams apart (there were no uniforms) so one of the onlookers bought ribbons from a nearby millinery store to pin on Williams' players. The only color available was purple. The buyer was Jennie Jerome (later Winston Churchill's mother) whose family summered in Williamstown.

Williams' other color is gold, purple's complementary color, which is why most team uniforms and paraphernalia have purple and a form of gold or yellow as the two dominant colors.

Purple cow

The Williams college mascot, formally established by a vote of the student body in 1907, is a purple cow. This peculiar mascot has several possible sources:

- Gelett Burgess's nonsense poem:

I never saw a purple cow

Nor do I hope to see one;

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I'd rather see than be one.

- A humor magazine in the early 20th Century was named "The Purple Cow."

According to a caption on a photograph at the Williamstown House of Local History, the the purple cow may have come from a student prank: a farmer always left his cow staked near Weston Field, and several students painted the cow purple.

Alma mater

Williams claims the first alma mater song written by an undergraduate, "The Mountains", which was written by Washington Gladden of the class of 1859.

Student media

There are several Williams publications produced by students each year. The longest running student newspaper is the Williams Record which is a weekly broadsheet paper produced every Tuesday. Several other newspapers have been founded over the years, but none have survived as long as the Record.

The student yearbook is called the Gulielmensian (named after the Latin word for Williams). It has been irregularly published in the past decade, but dates back to the mid 19th century.

Numerous smaller campus publications of a literary nature are also produced each year, including a campus humor magazine and collections of poetry.

WCFM Williamstown 91.9 broadcasts from new offices in Prospect Hall at 1.1 kilowatts, reaching most of the Berkshire area. As the campus radio station, it is commercial and format free, leaving DJs to program as they wish. It also occasionally broadcasts Williams sporting events and hosts campus concerts. An online feed makes WCFM available to listeners worldwide.

Williams trivia

At the end of every semester since 1966, the Williams College radio station has hosted an all-night, 8-hour trivia contest. Teams of students, alumni, professors and others compete to answer questions on any number of subjects, identify songs, and perform a variety of unnecessary tasks. The winning team's only prize is the obligation to create and host the following semester's contest. It is the oldest continuous competition of its sort in the United States. Further history and details are available at an archival website.

Alumni society

Williams has the oldest existing Alumni Society of any academic institution in the United States, and may have the oldest alumni organization in the world. The Alumni Society was founded during the "Amherst crisis" in 1821, when Williams College President Zephaniah Swift Moore left Williams. Graduates of Williams formed the Alumni Society to ensure that Williams would not have to close, and raised enough money to ensure the future survival of the school.

In the years since the Amherst Crisis the generosity of alumni has made Williams one of the wealthiest educational institutions in the United States, with an endowment of over $1 billion.

Not affiliated with the Society of Alumni, but also serving the college's alumni is the Williams Club in New York City. Located at 24 East 39th Street in Manhattan, the club is open to the paying public as a hotel and restaurant, and operates as a meeting space for Williams alumni living in and visiting the city.

Notable alumni

Academics