Williams, Amelia Worthington (1876–1958) - History of Texas

Amelia Worthington Williams was born in Maysfield, Texas, on March 25, 1876, to Thomas Herbert Williams, a merchant and cotton planter, and Emma (Massengale) Williams. She attended Stuart Seminary in Austin, Texas, and Ward Seminary (later the Ward-Belmont School) in Nashville, Tennessee, where she received a liberal arts degree in 1895. She also received a B.A. degree at Southwest Texas State Normal School (later State College) in 1922 and a B.A. and M.A. in 1926 and a Ph.D. in 1931 from the University of Texas. From 1904 to 1925 she taught history and English in several Texas schools. In 1925 she began teaching American and English history at the University of Texas, where she became professor in 1931. She taught there until her retirement in 1951.

Williams’s specialty was Texas history. Her doctoral dissertation, “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders,” made her the authority on the subject at that time. She also wrote Following General Sam Houston in 1935 and edited, with Eugene C. D. Barker, eight volumes of The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863 (1938–1943). She was a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the Daughters of the American Revolution, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Order of the Eastern Star. Amelia Williams died in Austin, Texas, on August 14, 1958.