James Henry Williams (1831 – 1889) was a nineteenth-century Episcopal priest and philanthropist from New York who married an heiress from Virginia who ultimately founded Sweet Briar College after their only child, Daisy, predeceased them.
Her late father, teacher turned businessman and farmer Elijah Fletcher had owned plantations and valuable real estate as well as a cattle trading business in nearby Lynchburg (receiving cattle from his brother in the state of Indiana and selling them in Virginia), and had helped found St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Lynchburg as well as Ascension Episcopal Church in Amherst.
During winters, which her parents spent in New York City, Daisy attended Miss Haines' School in Gramercy Square; she would die in Manhattan on January 22, 1884.
He ordered a winged angel statue to mark her grave, endowed a window at Amherst's Ascension Church in her honor, and wrote his own will on November 12, 1885.
That named his wife as executrix and beneficiary, as well as indicated his desire that a trust be established for the education of children under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church and as a memorial of their late daughter.
His widow (who never remarried) would found Sweet Briar College, by funding a trust at her death with Virginia's Episcopal bishop Alfred Magill Randolph and two priests (Rev.