WILLIAMS COLLEGE (ante), at Williamstown, Berkshire co., Mass., founded in 1703 by the will of col. Ephraim Williams, from whom it takes its name. It had its beoinning, however, at an earlier day, in a free school, a part of whose endowment was derived from a lottery. The legislature in 1793 appropriated $4,000 from the state treasury to purchase a library and apparatus. It is not under the patronage of any religious denomi nation, though most of its instructors have been Congregationalists, and its influence has been strongly religious, though in no narrow sense. it has an endowment of $300,000, and an annual income of $40,000. The original building, now known as West college, and used as a dormitory, was erected 1790. There are three other buildings used as dormitories. Besides these, the other principal buildings are Griffin hall, erected in 1828. and now used for natural history cabinets. lecture-rooms, etc. ; Lawrence hall, the library building, erected in 1846 by Amos Lawrence of Boston; Jackson hall, pre sented by Nathan Jackson, of New York, in 1855, to contain the collections of the lyceum of natural history; the college chapel, built in 1860; Goodrich hall, the gift of hon. J. Z. Goodrich, of Stockbridge, in 1864, and intended for a gymnasium, and for chemical and physical apparatus and lecture-rooms. Mr. Goodrich has also made provision for building a new gymnasium, which will give enlarged facilities in Goodrich ball to the departments above-mentioned, while providing a large hall for concerts, lectures, etc., in
what was before the gymnasium. There is an astronomical observatory. In natural history the college has an ample and valuable cabinet.' The geological collection is espe cially valuable, not only on account of the great number and perfection of the speci mens, but because it contains so large a number of rare fossils. The valuable collection known as the " Wilder cabinet" has been purchased for the college for $8,000. The botanical collections are very rich. The zoological museum contains several thousand specimens. The library has 19,000 vols. In physics the menus of illustration arc ample. The college has no departments or schools of art, and no professional or post-graduate courses. In 1808 the first foreign missionary society in this country was formed by students of this college, who had devoted themselves to that work, and the formation of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions was in great part the result of this society's labors. The society of alumni, organized in 1821, was the first associa tion of the kind in this country. the history of the college was published in a volume, in 1860, by the rev. Calvin Durfee. Number of professors iu 1880, 12; of students, 206; of alumni, 2,544. President, Franklin Carter, lately professor in Yale college.