American soldier, born in Boston, MA, on the 26th of May 1750; received a good education, and entered a Boston commercial house. He acted as private secretary to his uncle, Benjamin Franklin, during the latter’s’ambassadorship to France, and while there studied military science, making a specialty of fortification. He was for a time judge of the court of common pleas in Philadelphia; was appointed major of the Second Regiment of artillerists and engineers, February 1801; was made inspector of fortifications in December of the same year, and was given command of the post at West Point, where he was also an instructor and first superintendent of the present Military Academy (1802–03). He planned and superintended the construction of most of the New York harbor forts, including Forts Columbus and Clinton (Castle Garden), and Castle Williams (Governor’s Island), the latter being the first “casemated” battery in the United States, being planned after Montalembert, a fortification that Williams had studied while in France. In 1812 he resigned from the army, returned to Philadelphia, and was corresponding secretary of the American Philosophical Society. Besides a number of translations and many contributions to the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, he published The Use of the Thermometer in Navigation (1799). He was elected to Congress in 1814, but did not live to take his seat, dying in Philadelphia on the 16th of May 1815.
