https://magazine.williams.edu/2016/summer/feature/looking-at-yesterday-today/
Leslie Brown: A history of slavery needs to be done at Williams, too. We know Ephraim Williams had a slave or two.
Beschloss: How much more do we know about this dimension of Eph Williams?
Dew: Not much. He was a prominent New Englander of his place and time, which meant he had a handful of slaves. The study of the history of the institution that comes from this sort of awareness can be incredibly valuable. What happened with Ephraim Williams’ slaves when he died? Were they sold as part of his estate, and did those resources go into the founding of the college?
Brown: Or did his slaves create the wealth Eph already had?
Beschloss: In the past, people haven’t always paid close attention to information about where the money comes from. [...]
Brown: One thing that should come to us in these conversations about historical representation is that these were not up/ down decisions that were made, or yes/no, positive/negative. So, yes, there’s the money from the slave trade. Meanwhile, Williams had the first abolition society on any campus.
Dew: An alumnus recently acquired and gave to the Chapin Library a pamphlet that came out of a Williams abolition society from the mid-1820s. That’s well before William Lloyd Garrison started The Liberator [a weekly newspaper denouncing slavery]. It’s important to be aware of the religious and moral heritage of the school and to understand how evangelical this place was in the 19th century.
Brown: Southern students might have brought their slaves with them to campus. But this area was also an Underground Railroad site. The fact that the abolitionist society was having public debates means there was an exchange of ideas, a discourse. Students in that era dealt with these issues among themselves and developed their own politics. When you move into the Civil War era, you note the number of students who left the college to go to war and who did Freedmen’s Bureau work after that. The founder of the Hampton Institute was a Williams graduate.