Mary Wilhelmine Williams

Mary Wilhelmine Williams (May 14, 1878 – March 10, 1944) specialized in Latin American history. She was on the board of editors of the Hispanic American Historical Review from 1927 to 1933 and was secretary of the Conference on Latin American History in 1928 and 1934.

Williams is credited for starting the first collegiate course in Canadian history in the United States in 1916. She contributed to the Dictionary of American Biography and wrote two books on Scandinavia.

Williams was an active feminist and pacifist. She was a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and was founder of the California chapter of the National Woman's Party in California. Also, she was the editor of Equal Rights, an independent feminist weekly from 1935 to 1936.

Biography

Williams was born on May 14, 1878, on a remote farm in Stanislaus County, California. Her mother, Caroline Madsen, was from Denmark and her father, Charles Williams, was born in Sweden. Williams came from a large and impoverished family of four sisters and two brothers.

At the age of eighteen Williams attended San Jose State Normal School in California and graduated in 1901. She was a teacher for three years before attending Stanford University, where she received her M.A. in 1908. Williams went back to teaching from 1908 to 1911 while studying at the University of Chicago during the summers. She took a trip to London, England, in 1911 to research her doctoral dissertation at the Public Record Office. Williams received her Ph.D. in 1914 and became an instructor in history at Stanford University. Her dissertation, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815–1915, won the Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association. From 1914 to 1915 Williams was an instructor in history at Wellesley College. Williams taught at Goucher College in Baltimore as a professor from 1921 to 1940. There she taught one of the first college courses offered in the United States on women's history.