Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/568

534 1862, commanded in the first unsuccessful attack on Vicksburg, and projected and superintended the cutting of a canal that was designed to turn the course of the Mississippi away from that city. On the failure of this enterprise he was placed in command at Baton Rouge, where he successfully repelled the vigorous attack of Gen. John C. Breck- inridge, and was killed in the moment of victory while leading to the charge an Indiana regiment whose field-officers had fallen.

WILLIAMS, Thomas H., senator, b. in Vir- ginia, about 1795. He went to Pontotoc, Miss., soon after the Indians were removed from that region, and became a member of the state house of representatives. Mr. Williams was appointed by the governor, and afterward elected by the legislature, a U. S. senator, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James F. Trotter, and served from 13 Dec, 1838. till 3 March, 1839.

WILLIAMS, Thomas Hill, U. S. senator, b. in North Carolina, about 1780 ; d. in Robertson county, Tenn., about 1840. He received an aca- demical training, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began practice, but became a clerk in the war department at Washington. In 1805 he was appointed by President Jefferson register of the land-office for the territory of Mississippi, and he was collector of customs at the port of New Orleans. He was a delegate to the convention that framed the state constitution of Mississippi, and was elected one of the first U. S. senators from that state. He was re-elected, and served from 11 Dec, 1817, till 3 March, 1829. During the session of 1820-'l he voted for the Missouri compromise bill. He then removed to Tennessee, where he remained until the time of his death.

WILLIAMS, Thomas Scott, jurist, b. in Wethersfield, Conn., 26 June, 1777; d. in Hart- ford, 15 Dec. 1861. He was graduated at Yale in 1794, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1799, and began practice at Mansfield, Conn., but re- moved to Hartford in 1803. He was appointed attorney of the board of managers of the school fund in 1809, from 1813 till 1829 represented Hart- ford in the general assembly, and sat in congress in 1817-'19. In May, 1829, he was appointed an associate judge of the supreme court of errors and of the superior court, and in May, 1834, he was appointed chief justice, which office he held until the constitutional expiration of his term in 1847. After retiring from the bench he never resumed the practice of his profession further than to act occasionally as an arbitrator or referee. He was mayor of the city of Hartford from 1831 till 1835. For several years he had been president of the American tract society, and he was active in vari- ous other religious and benevolent organizations. He was a contributor to objects of benevolence, and bequeathed $28,000 to charitable institutions. WILLIAMS, Sir William, British officer, b. in England about 1776 ; d. in Bath, England, 17 June, 1832. He was appointed ensign in the 40th foot in 1794, lieutenant in 1795, captain in 1799, major in 1802, and lieutenant-colonel in the 60th foot in 1809. He served at Corunna, Salamanca, and other battles during the campaign in the penin- sula, and in 1814 in Canada, when he commanded at St. John's and at the posts in advance on Riche- lieu river, and was complimented in general or- ders for his services. He was appointed a knight commander of the Bath. 5 Jan., 1815, became a colonel in 1819, and a major-general in 1830.

WILLIAMS, William, publisher, b. in Fram- ingham, Mass., 12 Oct.. 1787 : d. in Utica, N. Y., 10 June, 1850. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from the Puritan settler, Robert Will- iams, of Roxbury. His father's family removing to the village of New Hartford, Oneida co., in 1791, he was there apprenticed at the age of eleven to William McLean, a pioneer of printing and found- er of the first newspaper in central New York. In 1800 he entered the establishment of Asahei Seward, his brother-in-law, in Utica, and upon com- ing of age formed a partnership with him under the firm-name of Seward and Williams. The works issued from their press were chiefly religious and instructive. They were also publishers of a news- paper which, under the name of the " Utica Pa- triot and Patrol," and other titles, strongly advo- cated De Witt Clinton and his. canal policy, but ended in 1821 in a lawsuit and loss. Seward with- drew in 1824, leaving the business entirely to his partner, who indulged his anti-Mason proclivities in issuing a weekly paper entitled " The Elucida- tor," which was also a financial failure. In 1829 he published " Light on Masonry," which brought upon him the ill-will of the Masons. Mr. Williams was an elder in the Presbyterian church, and the organizer and superintendent of one of the earliest Sunday-schools in the country. During the cholera scourge in 1832 he gave his whole time to prescrib- ing for the sick, distributing aid to the needy, and burying the dead, until he was taken dangerously ill toward the end of the plague. He raised a company of volunteers in 1813 for the relief of Sackett's Harbor, and served elsewhere in the war, remaining after its close as colonel of the militia regiment in Utica. — His son, Samuel Wells, sinologist, b. in Utica, N. Y., 22 Sept., 1812 ; d. in New Haven, Conn., 16 Feb., 1884, entered Rensselaer polytechnic institute at Troy in 1831. While in this school he accepted a proposal to go to China and take charge of a printing-office recently established there by the American board of missions. Arriving at Canton, 25 Oct., 1833, he found Dr. Robert Morrison, an Englishman, and Elijah C. Bridgman, an American, the only Protestant missionaries in China. He joined the latter as editor of the " Chinese Repository," which he both printed and edited until its conclusion in 1851. In all he contributed about 130 articles to this magazine. In 1835 he removed his office to the Portuguese colony of Macao in order to complete the printing of Dr. Walter H. Medhurst's Hokkeen dictionary, which had been left unfinished at the dissolution of the East India company's China branch, and the company's font of Chinese type was from this date placed entirely at his disposal. During the winter of 1837-8 he began to print the "Chinese Chrestomathy," by Dr. Bridgman, to which he contributed one half. While this was in press he was also kept busy learning Japanese from some sailors, and with their aid made a version of the books of Genesis and Matthew in that language. In 1844 he returned to the United States by way of India, Egypt, Palestine, and Italy, and proposed to the secretary of the Presbyterian board of missions to assist them in obtaining a full font of Chinese type, from matrices to be cut in Berlin. His share of raising the necessary funds was performed by delivering many courses of lectures on China in various cities of the Union, and these, being amplified, were published under the title of the " Middle Kingdom. ' with a new map of the empire (2 vols., New. York, 1848). The same year he returned with his wife to China and began at once a new Chinese dictionary, the completion of which was delayed, while he accompanied Com. Matthew C. Perry's two expeditions to Japan in 1853-'4, as Japanese interpreter, and materially assisted in