ROBERT STANTON WILLIAMS
Robert Stanton Williams, youngest surviving child of Col. William and Sophia Wells Williams, was born in Utica, September 10, 1828. After the sale of his book store Colonel Williams removed in 1836 with his family to Tonawanda, N. Y., to take charge of an estate of which he was part owner in connection with Henry Huntington of Rome. Whatever childhood in a Western village may be to the imagination its reality in the case of Robert S. Williams was not sufficiently attractive to have crowded his memory in after years with many recollections of the place. Having passed his tenth birthday he was placed with Henry Ivison (his father's former apprentice in the Utica book-bindery), at that time a prosperous bookseller in Auburn. An agreement was made under which the boy was received in the family of his employer and allowed to pay for the cost of board and schooling by doing odd jobs in the store and learning the book-binder's trade. But the strain of over-many duties presently told on his health, and by the summer of 1842 he was compelled to seek the rest and change of country life. During the two following years he lived on the farm of his uncle, James Wells, at New Hartford, where with his brother Edward he became acquainted with the approved methods of Oneida county farming. In 1844 he went to Brooklyn, where his brother Dwight was living, and there attended school for a term. Returning in the winter to Auburn he re-entered Mr. Ivison's
employ; remaining with him until September, 1846. The appetite for learning was not yet appeased in spite of this hopeful opening in a business career. He entered the Cortland Academy at Homer, then under the management of Samuel B. Woolworth, afterward secretary of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and in this institution he remained until March, 1848 nearly completing his preparation for college. After a year spent in Utica he received an appointment (July, 1849) in the railway mail service as route agent between Albany and Buffalo. The work was fatiguing in the extreme, and railway travel in that day was not only tiresome, but rendered dangerous by frequent accidents. Early in 1852 he resigned his position to attend his brother James during a fatal illness, which terminated in March of that year, and with his return to his native city begins Mr. Williams's permanent and intimate association with its progress and interests. Without marked predilection for any particular occupation it was perhaps an accident at first that secured him a place as bookkeeper in the City Bank, but the choice once made was most fortunate for the exercise of his abilities to the best advantage. Emphatically masculine, robust, and sane, accomplishing his ends by shere force of honesty, of being in the right rather than by mere cleverness, he soon won from those who could best judge his course that confidence and respect which constitute the necessary moral capital of every successful banker. While in his subordinate position he lost no opportunity of improving his technical knowledge. To this end, when one of his senior fellow clerks became restless by being kept long after banking hours, he induced him as a favor to teach him the method used in his department, and was soon able to take care of part of his and all of his own books, while his friend prolonged his restful sessions in the pursuit of literary fame. This sort of devoted diligence earns its reward even outside
of the region of moral fiction. The directors of the Oneida National Bank had, it may be inferred, a pretty definite conception of his working capacity when they induced him to enter their employ in October, 1854, the same month in which he was married. During his term of forty-two years, the longest service of any individual in this bank, Mr. Williams has passed successively through all its grades and concerned himself heartily in its welfare. After a few months in the position of bookkeeper he was made teller in February, 1855; from this, in 1863, he was promoted to the chair of managing cashier and at the same time elected a director. As cashier he conducted for nearly a quarter of a century the affairs and policy of the bank, which he has retained in his control during his term as president, an office given him upon the death of A. J. Williams in 1886.
With increasing years have come multiplying opportunities for good and faithful service in many fields. His performances in the business and industrial community have lately been on a larger scale, but they are of a piece with his early work and have fitly crowned it with success. To examine these in detail would carry us into almost every important industrial concern that Utica has known during a generation. Before them all in his own estimation would come the First Presbyterian church and Sunday school, the church of his father, whose successor he has been, both as ruling elder and Sunday school superintendent. In the work of establishing mission branches in Deerfield and East and West Utica he has displayed the same practical zeal which characterized both his parents as Christian laborers among their fellow citizens. His interest in educational matters has engaged him actively in behalf of both public and private schools. Soon after the destruction by fire of the Utica Female Academy, in 1865, he was elected a trustee (a position he still holds) and placed upon the executive committee in charge of erecting the new building. As an expression of the committee's foresight and faithful stewardship the building is more successful, perhaps, than as an aesthetic ornament to the town. In the progress and success of the school itself, with which Mr. Williams has ever since been closely associated, he takes the liveliest satisfaction, a good part of which comes from his personal share in calling Mrs. Piatt to her felicitous and effective career as its principal. He was elected in 1870 a public school commissioner, serving three years, at a time when the board exercised its discretion in deciding upon the text books and studies within its jurisdiction. Among other innovations he advocated teaching music in the public schools, and secured for this end the permanent employment of a qualified teacher. During two terms as alderman, from 1874 to 1878, Mr. Williams labored for economy in the management of municipal matters, and, though on the minority side of the council, succeeded simply by strength of integrity in carrying out some reforms of lasting benefit. His measures as chairman of the finance committee dealt with the things of a technical rather than of a general interest, but in his resolute effort to raise the City Library from a mere assortment of juvenile literature to be a medium of substantial benefit to the whole community he won the thanks of every citizen. He was one of the incorporators of the Utica Public Library and has served as president since its organization. He also strongly advocated and assisted in the change from a volunteer to a paid fire department. His active connection with local politics terminated in 1878, when he became a candidate for the mayoralty. He accepted the nomination, as he declared in a card announcing his determination, " with considerable reluctance and at some personal sacrifice, solely in behalf of strict economy and honesty in every branch of city government." His defeat was almost wholly due to his unwillingness to bind himself by pledges of any sort to political managers, who were so impressed with his fearlessness and independence as to prefer to see a candidate of the opposite party elected. Mr. Williams has also served as one of the railroad commissioners for the city of Utica, being appointed in 1871 under the law of 1869 providing for the municipal aid of railroads. In this capacity he assisted in the issue of $200,000 in bonds of the city of Utica, in aid of the Utica, Clinton, and Binghamton Railroad, and was elected in 1872 a director of this road to represent the city's interest. In 1881 he was made secretary and treasure of the company and has, since its reorganization, been prominent in its management. He is also a trustee of the Savings Bank of Utica.
The list of business organizations in which Mr. Williams has been more or less directly concerned is much too long for comprehensive notice; there remains space to indicate only a few, to the success of which his judgment and energy have largely contributed. Since 1879 he has been on the executive committee of the Utica Cemetery Association, which induced the association to buy the tract of 150 acres adjoining Forest Hill Cemetery when it could be procured at a reasonable figure, thus adding to its beauty and insuring room for its enlargement for many years. In 1895 he was elected vice-president of the association. Upon the first introduction of the Edison telephone, in 1879, Mr. Williams, with others, organized a company for providing telephone service within a fifteen-mile circuit about Utica. The license for five years obtained by this company was in 1882, in connection with similar licenses held by four other companies, voluntarily surrendered in exchange for a perpetual license from the Bell Telephone Company covering a territory of twelve counties in Central New York, and a new company was formed known as the Central New York Telephone and Telegraph Company with a capital of $500,000, of which Mr. Williams was made president. Another project which originated at about this time (1880), when after the resumption of specie payment money was comparatively plenty and capital sought employment, was the " Mohawk Valley Cotton Mills," a company for the manufacture of cotton cloth. In association with Messrs. 'I`. K. Butler, Ephraim Chamberlain, Addison C. Miller, P. V. Rogers, Nicholas E. Kernan and others, the scheme was promptly started and Mr. Williams elected vice-president. In 1885 he was elected president of the company. The call for such legitimate and promising investments being still greater than the supply the " Skenandoa Cotton Company" was organized in 1881 by nearly the same gentlemen to manufacture yarn. Its success has been due principally to its reputation for making the best possible quality of goods, and in the second place to its practice of selling directly to consumers. Still a third venture of this sort, the " Utica Willowvale Bleaching Company," originated under the same auspices in 1881 and likewise numbers Mr. Williams among its directors. On the death of Mr. Chamberlain in 1895 Mr. Williams was elected president of the Utica Steam Cotton Mills, one of the largest and most successful corporations of the kind in the country. The same year he became a director in the Globe Woolen Company, of Utica.
This is but the bare enumeration, indeed, of some of the chief lines of his activity, omitting from the list many other movements, like those of the street railways, the gas and water works, the Oneida Historical Society, etc., in which he has at one time or another borne his share of the risk or effort. His private library, one of the largest collections in the city, is the accumulation of many years and represents pretty accurately the subjects of general and particular interest with which he has stored his mind.
Mr. Williams was married in 1854 to Miss Abby Ober, eldest daughter of Charles R. Doolittle, and they have had three children who attained maturity--two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, George Huntington Williams, was graduated from Amherst College in 1878, received the degree of Ph. D. from Heidelberg University, Germany, in 1883, and at the time of his death, July 12, 1894, was professor of inorganic geology at Johns Hopkins University, president of the Society of American Geologists, a member of the U. S. Geological Survey, and the author of more than sixty books and papers on subjects connected with his profession. The youngest son, John Camp Williams, is now vice-president and general manager of. the Western Tube Company, of Kewanee, Ill., a concern that employs from 1,400 to 1,800 men in the manufacture of iron and steel pipe.
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