Williams, Joseph J. (Joseph John), 1875-1940

Joseph John Williams was born in 1875 in Boston, Massachusetts to Nicholas and Mary Jane (O’Connor) Williams. He was educated at Boston College High School. Williams received a Bachelor of Arts from Woodstock College, Maryland in 1901, and went on to earn his Masters in 1903 and his PhD in Ethnography in 1909. Williams joined the Society of Jesus in 1893 in Frederick, Maryland and was ordained in 1907 in New York.

From 1912 to 1917, Williams served as a missionary in Jamaica, sparking his interest in anthropology. He returned to the United States and became treasurer of Woodstock College from 1917 to 1918, and of College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts from 1918 to 1922. In 1934, Williams became Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Boston College in Massachusetts, and helped found the Department of Anthropology there. Drawing upon the anthropological and archaeological data he had collected in Jamaica, Williams published a number of books, including Whisperings of the Caribbean (1925), Hebrewisms of West Africa (1930), and The Maroons of Jamaica (1938).

Williams was a fellow of numerous societies, including the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Society of Arts, Royal Anthropological Institute, and the American Ethnographic Society. He was also on the executive board of the Catholic Anthropological Conference in 1935, and was president of the Jesuit Anthropological Association. Williams died on October 28, 1940 in the Shadowbrook novitiate in Massachusetts.