Williams was at one time High Sheriff of Northamptonshire and a partner in the banking firm of Williams Deacon and Co.[1] He was a major investor with the South Australian Company and closely associated with Lord John Russell, Gibbon Wakefield, and George Fife Angas.
[2] Williams, his wife Catherine, née Codd, and much of their family emigrated on the Platina, arriving in South Australia in February 1839, and for a time they lived in "The Barn", in Wakefield Street, a rambling thatched wooden structure built in 1837, perhaps Adelaide's first permanent residence, whose previous tenants included H. B. T. Strangways, Lady Hindmarsh, then Hindmarsh's sons-in-law Milner Stephen and Alfred Miller Mundy.
He was in June 1843 appointed by Governor Gawler to one of the four newly created "non-official" (i.e. without portfolio) seats on the second Legislative Council.
He mortgaged the choicest 1,700 acres with his daughter Elizabeth, without mentioning the fact to the bank, which held the deeds as security on the overdraft.
[6] His creditors were paid 2 shillings in the pound (10%), while his daughter, who in 1844 became Mrs. Peachey, retained possession of "The Hermitage".