The Early Years
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2017-01-25T11:22:19-08:00
Samuel Wells Williams was born in 1812 in Utica, New York, to what would become a very large family of 14 children. There, he forged a lifelong bond with his neighbor and schoolmate, James Dwight Dana.[1] [See Frederick Wells Williams,The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, 1888] After Williams completed high school, where he had shown considerable academic promise, he dreamed about continuing his education at the college level by following Dana to Yale. The two young men hoped to study natural history under Benjamin Silliman, the top geologist in the country. Unfortunately, Williams’s father had other plans. William Williams owned and operated one of the largest printing houses in western New York, and he fully expected to pass on the family business to his first son. He refused to pay for a Yale education, choosing instead to make his son his apprentice. To Samuel Wells Williams, the disappointment was profound. He would later regret that he had not insisted more vigorously on attending Yale, even if that had meant paying his own way by finding a job in New Haven.[2]
Though he would not join Dana at Yale, Samuel Wells Williams did continue his formal education. After he had spent several months working with his father, it became abundantly clear to both father and son that the latter, though an able printer, possessed absolutely no business sense. Williams simply would not be able to run the family business. After Samuel’s mother died in 1831, William Williams relented and agreed to fund several additional years of education for his son. By way of the recently completed Erie Canal, Williams traveled to Troy, New York, and enrolled at the Rensselaer Institute.
The Rensselaer Institute had been founded in 1824 to encourage the application of science to practical affairs.[3] Yet when Williams arrived, he found only six students enrolled, and the school could not even provide him with a bed. Williams wrote to Dana in New Haven: “To tell you the truth, James, I never, never experienced such a disappointment, such an utter failure of expectations, in my life.”[4] While Dana successfully moved to the center of America’s intellectual world at Yale, the equally talented Williams remained on the periphery.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, Williams grew to enjoy the curriculum at the Rensselaer Institute, which placed heavy emphasis on natural history. Through his study of botany, entomology, zoology, and mineralogy, Williams learned how to collect, classify, and sketch natural specimens according to the system developed by the Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus.[5] These experiences studying the natural world apparently instilled in him a reverence for the Creator. In a letter to his father, Williams wrote enthusiastically about the revelations he had received from his astronomy class, describing the sun, stars, nebulae, the Milky Way, and the vastness of the universe. “Yet the goodness and infinite wisdom of the Creator,” he continued, “is as much shown in the formation and habits of the water-spider as in these suns, the size of which we cannot conceive.” To Williams, the goal of science was to discern God’s blueprints for the universe, and with this noble purpose in mind, the young student decided to become a naturalist.[6]
Meanwhile, his father learned that the fledgling protestant mission in Canton was in dire need of a qualified individual to operate its printing office. The notion that one or more of the Williams boys would spend their lives engaged in missionary work had come up before. Samuel’s mother had experienced a religious awakening following his difficult birth, and prior to her death she made a fateful promise in church: “I give two of my sons.” Her words were not forgotten.[7]
When Samuel learned that his father had volunteered him for the position in China, he immersed himself in a single night of intense meditation, reluctantly agreeing to go in the end. Quite possibly, the recent passing of his mother played a role his decision. While Williams accepted the post in China, he harbored one serious reservation. “So deeply has the love of the works of God…got imbued into me,” he wrote his father, “that I fear, if I went [to China], any object of natural history would interest me more than anything else.”[8] Williams feared that his passion for science would distract his attention away from his responsibilities as a missionary printer. Yet, Williams eventually found a way to synthesize his love for science with his religious obligations.
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[1] Frederick Wells Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D. (New York:G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 20.
[2] Frederick Wells Williams, 30-32.
[3] Frederick Wells Williams, 30-32.
[4] Frederick Wells Williams, 34.
[5] Letter to James D. Dana, Yale College, April 23, 1832. Box 1. Series 1. Samuel Wells Williams Family Papers. Manuscript Collections, Yale University Library. Hereafter, this collection will be cited as SWWFP.
[6] Frederick Wells Williams, 37-38. See also Jiang Qian, “Samuel Wells Williams and the Attitudes of U.S. Protestant Missionaries toward the Opium Trade and the Opening of China, 1830-1860” (M.A. Thesis, The University of Toledo, 1992), 4-5.
[7] Samuel Wells Williams, “Autobiographical Sketch” (April, 1878). Box 13. Series 2. SWWFP.
[8] Frederick Wells Williams, 39-40.
