Early Life
Williams was born in Deep River, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University with a law degree in 1831. His father, who died when Williams was eight years old, had left him a sizable inheritance, which he used between 1832 and 1836 for extensive travel in the United States and Europe. Upon his return, he settled in Detroit, Michigan, which was a booming frontier town in 1836. He established himself as a lawyer and married the daughter of a prominent family, Jane Hereford, with whom he produced five children, two of whom died as infants. Jane herself died young as well, in 1849, at the age of 30.
Williams had a variety of careers in Detroit. He was elected probate judge of Wayne County, Michigan; in 1842, president of the Bank of St. Clair; in 1843, the owner and editor of the Detroit Advertiser daily newspaper; from 1849 to 1853, postmaster of Detroit.
When Williams arrived in Detroit in 1836, he joined a company in the Michigan Militia and maintained a connection to the military activities of the city for years. In 1847, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 1st Michigan Infantry destined for the Mexican-American War, but it arrived too late to see any action. He also served as the president of the state's military board and in 1859 was a major in the Detroit Light Guard.
Read more about this topic: Alpheus S. Williams
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)