[Orlando Williams]. American author, born at Centerville, NY, on the 19th of February 1824; educated at Westfield Academy and at the Rochester Collegiate Institute. After teaching Latin and Greek in Genoa Academy, and mathematics and languages in Aurora Academy, he removed to New York, where he studied theology, though he never connected himself with any denomination. He afterward studied medicine, and was appointed Wisconsin state geologist and surgeon-general in 1874. He served as health-officer for the city of Milwaukee, WI (1877–82), and for the city of Detroit, MI (1882–88). He received the degree of LL.D. from Yale University. Besides contributing to The North American Review, The New Englander and other magazines, he published a large number of works, including The Romance of Abélard and Héloïse (1853; enlarged ed., 1861); The Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton; translations of Victor Cousin’s Course of the History of Modern Philosophy (1852); and Lectures on the True, the Beautiful and the Good (1854); and Standard French Classics (1859), in 12 volumes. He also assisted Mary L. Booth in the translation of Henri Martin’s History of France (1863). He died at Detroit, MI, on the 19th of October 1888.
