WILLIAMS, William, publisher, born in Framingham, Massachusetts, 12 October, 1787; died in Utica, New York, 10 June, 1850. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from the Puritan settler, Robert Williams, of Roxbury. His father's family removing to the village of New Hartford, Oneida County, in 1791. He was there apprenticed at the age of eleven to William McLean, a pioneer of printing and founder of the first newspaper in central New York. In 1800 he entered the establishment of Asahel Seward, his brother-in-law, in Utica, and upon coming 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 newspaper which, under the name of the " Utica Patriot and Patrol," and other titles, strongly advocated De Witt Clinton and his canal policy, but ended in 1821 in a lawsuit and loss. Seward withdrew in 1824, leaving the business entirely to his partner, who indulged his anti-Mason proclivities in issuing a weekly paper entitled '" The Elucidator," which was also a financial failure. In 1829 he published " Light on Masonry," which brought upon him the ill-will of the Masons. 3h'. Williams was an elder in the Presbyterian church, and the organizer and superintendent of one of the earliest Sunday-schools in the tom try. During the cholera scourge in 1882 he gave his whole time to prescribing 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 1818 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, born in Utica, New York, 22 September, 1812; died in New Haven. Conn., 16 February, 1884, entered Rensselaer polytechnic institute at Troy in 1881. 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 October, 1883, 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 180 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 Commander Matthew C. Perry's two expeditions to Japan in 1853-'4, as Japanese interpreter, and materially assisted in concluding the treaty that opened that country to foreign commerce and civilization. In September, 1855, he was appointed secretary and interpreter to the United States legation in China. His " Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect" was finished in August, 1856, eight years from its beginning and just before the destruction of the foreign factories at Canton, which with his press and more than 7,000 books, were burned in December of that year. He resigned his connection with the American board in 1857, and in the following year assisted the American envoy. William B. Reed, in negotiating a new treaty and the settlement of claims of Americans upon the Chinese government for losses at Canton and elsewhere. To Mr. Williams's abiding interest in the cause of missions was due the insertion in this treaty of a clause tolerating Christianity in China, a stipulation which was borrowed from his draft and inserted by each of the three allied European powers there assembled. The next year he accompanied Mr. Ward to exchange the ratifications on the first visit of Americans to Peking. When the legation returned to the south, Mr. Williams made a second visit to the United States. In 1862 he went with Anson Burlingame to Peking, where he resided with his family several years, in the course of which he built at his own expense and from his own designs the buildings that are still occupied by the United States legation in that capital. Besides his official duties, he found time to complete in these years his great work, "A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language," a quarto volume of 1336 pages, containing 12,527 characters and their pronunciations in four dialects, in order to superintend the printing personally, he spent the year 1873 in Shanghai, where it was stereotyped and published (1874) at the Presbyterian mission press, from the font of Chinese type the funds for which he was instrumental in raising in 1846-'8. Much impaired in health, he returned in 1875. going back to China in 1876 to close his affairs there and resign his office of secretary and inter-prater, the oldest commission at that time in the United States diplomatic service. During his term he had acted as charge d'affaires nine times, amounting to nearly five years of service as acting minister. He was the oldest foreign resident in China at the date of his departure. In 1877 he was appointed professor of the Chinese language and literature in Yale, being the first professor of the sort in this country. In 1881 he was elected president of the American Bible society, and later in the year president of the American oriental society. In 1848 Mr. Williams received the degree of LL. D. from Union college. Besides the works already mentioned, he published "Easy Lessons in Chinese;' (Macao, 1842) ; "English and Chinese Vocabulary" (1843) ; " Chinese Topography" (1844) ; and "Chinese Commercial Guide," based on a previous work (1844: 5th revised ed., Hong Kong, 186;3); and completely rewrote, enlarged, and brought down to (late his important; work on "The Middle Kingdom" (2 vols., New York, 1883). See "The Life and Letters of S. Wells Williams," by his son, Frederick Wells Williams (New York, 1888).