[1] Williams was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, attended Sandwich Academy where he studied under Luther Lincoln, and graduated from Harvard in 1831 with distinguished honors.

[2] Because of ill health, Williams left his law practice and traveled to Toledo, Ohio, and served as the agent of a New England company seeking land investments until 1839 when he moved to Constantine, Michigan, where he invested in the construction and operation of flour mills, and was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1850, twice the Whig candidate for Congress, and twice the Whig candidate for the United States Senate against Lewis Cass.

However, Williams excluded Latin and Greek studies from the early curriculum, which meant that these classical languages were not tested for admission given the College's overwhelmingly rural applicant base.

The labor requirement helped students defray expenses, and cheaply clear and develop the campus while learning scientific principles from faculty-supervisors.

Despite Williams' eloquent defense of an all-round education for the masses, the board saw the College as inefficient and had far deviated from the agriculture focus as the founder, John Clough Holmes, had anticipated.

The Board then reduced the curriculum to a two-year, vocation-oriented farming program, which proved catastrophic and resulted almost overnight in a drastic reduction in enrollment.

[5][6] There was a high demand for an all-round education grounded in the liberal arts tradition instead of a specialized agriculture program, a fact the board disregarded.