William Dismukes Williams was born on September 7, 1823, in Putnam County, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1848, and he spent the next two years teaching school in Talbot County, Georgia. He married Nancy E. Callier on February 14, 1850, and they had at least six children: Albert, born around 1853; William, born around 1855; Howard, born around 1859; Sarah, born around 1862; Lucius, born around 1866; and Arthur, born around 1869.

 

Around 1851, he became an instructor at the Madison Female College in Madison, Georgia. He remained there until 1858, when he became superintendent of the Georgia Academy for the Blind. He was devoted to the academy’s mission. As he explained, the academy “is a school—not an eye infirmary—not a hospital—not an Asylum…Its business is to educate [blind students] in the rudiments of learning, vocal and instrumental music and handicraft…The education it seeks to give has for its object such a course of training as will qualify its pupils for a respectable place in society.”

 

By 1860, he owned $600 of real estate and $4,200 of personal property. A decade later, he owned $6,000 of real estate and $1,500 of personal property. In 1888, he was elected president of the American Association of Instructors for the Blind. He also served as president of the American Publishing House for the Blind. In the 1890s, a local writer described him as a “man of most lovable disposition and high character” whose “management of the [academy] has elicited the praise and commendation of every governor and legislature for the past forty years.” He died in Macon, Georgia, on December 10, 1898.

SOURCES