[1] The director of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, James Henry Breasted, became not only a mentor but a lifelong friend and correspondent of Ransom.

[1] Her thesis was published in 1905 as Studies in ancient furniture: Couches and beds of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans by the University of Chicago Press.

Ransom was commended for the work's "thoroughness and sane judgment" and for her ability to engage both the classical student and the general reader.

[6] From 1905 to 1910, Ransom was an assistant professor of Archaeology and Art at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, eventually becoming chair of her department.

Such affiliations connected Ransom to an international community of current scholars and reinforced her position as an active member of the academic world.

[14] In 1916 Ransom married Grant Williams, a real estate developer in Toledo, Ohio, and returned there to live.

Although they did not have children, family obligations to her husband and aging mother limited Ransom's ability to take on major professional commitments.

In a number of cases, most notably that of the Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus, she directed potentially prestigious work to others.

During the 1926/27 season, Caroline Ransom Williams took part in the Epigraphic Survey of the inscriptions at Luxor, at the invitation of Breasted of the University of Chicago.

She was one of four epigraphers on staff, the others being William F. Edgerton, John A. Wilson and the director of the site, Harold H. Nelson; all were former students of Breasted.

[2] In the Oriental Institute's report, Breasted expressed his "profound appreciation that Dr. Williams worked an entire season at Medinet Habu out of pure interest in the project and with almost no remuneration.

[1][22] She is credited with largely establishing the epigraphic standards for the group's work, with the assistance of Edgerton and Wilson.

[26] Around 1935, Ransom Williams worked with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) to catalog their Drexel Collection.