Williams College, a Congregational college of 200 students at Williamstown, Massachusetts, was founded as a free school by a bequest of Colonel Ephraim Williams in 1755, and incorporated in 1793. In 1838 it was provided with the first public astronomical observatory erected in America (see Nature, vol. xxxix. p. 137). This, the Hopkins Observatory, has since been superseded for scientific work by another.
Williams College
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 10: Swastika to Zyrianovsk and Index, p. 668
Source scan(s): p. 0697