Josiah B. Williams
American politician
Josiah Butler Williams (December 16, 1810 – September 26, 1883) was an American businessman, banker and senator from New York.
Life
He was the son of Josiah Williams (1768–1842) and Charity (Shaler) Williams (1775–1865). He married Mary Huggeford Hardy (1824–1911), and they had 12 children, among them geologist Henry Shaler Williams (1847–1918).
He was a Whig member of the New York State Senate (25th D.) from 1852 to 1855, sitting in the 75th, 76th, 77th and 78th New York State Legislatures.
Williams was nominated on the Know Nothing ticket for Canal Commissioner at the 1854 New York state election, but two weeks before the election declined to run. The party managers then substituted Hard Democrat Clark Burnham on the ticket but, due to slow communications, Williams still polled almost 60,000 votes.
He was a presidential elector in 1856, voting for John C. Frémont and William L. Dayton.
He was buried at the Ithaca City Cemetery.
State Senator Timothy S. Williams (1800–1849) was his brother; lumber magnate Henry W. Sage (1814–1897) was his nephew.
“Josiah B. Williams” enters the record as american politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Josiah, Williams and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Josiah B. Williams” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Josiah, Williams and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6290413. VIAF identifies the subject as 51620375. The Library of Congress control number is nr2001033111. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1883, 1768 and 1842.
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This entry incorporates text from “Josiah B. Williams” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.