Jesse Lynch Williams was born on May 6, 1807 at Westfield, Stokes County, North Carolina, the youngest son of Jesse and Sarah (Terrell) Williams, members of the Society of Friends. His parents removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, about 1814, then to Warren County, and about 1819 to Wayne County, Indiana.
For a short period Jesse was a student at Lancasterian Seminary, Cincinnati.
Inspired by the great schemes of canal improvement then popular, he selected civil engineering as his life work and secured a minor position on the first survey of the Miami & Erie Canal in Ohio, from Cincinnati to Maumee Bay, the line of which lay for one-half its length through unbroken wilderness.
In 1828 he made the final location of the canal from Licking Summit to Chillicothe and constructed one division, including a dam and aqueduct across the Scioto River. He was a member of the board of engineers which decided to use reservoirs rather than long feeders from distant streams for supplying water to the summit level of the canal, as a result of which decision a reservoir covering 15, 000 acres was built, the largest anywhere at that time.
In his twenty-fifth year he was appointed chief engineer of the Wabash & Erie Canal and in 1835 the surveys of all other canals in Indiana were placed by the legislature in his hands.
In 1836 he was made engineer-in-chief of all canal routes and in the following year the railroads and turnpikes were also placed under his charge; he was thus given supervision of 1, 300 miles of public works. In one summer he attended thirteen lettings of contracts, journeying some 3, 000 miles mainly on horseback as well as mastering the multitudinous details of construction. When the construction of public works was suspended because of financial stringency, he engaged in mercantile and manufacturing operations at Fort Wayne, 1842-47, and subsequently served the Wabash & Erie Canal as chief engineer, from 1847 to 1876, when it was sold. Meanwhile, he was also chief engineer of the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad from 1854 until its consolidation in 1856 with the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway, of which he was a director until 1873.
From 1864 until his resignation in 1869 he was appointed annually by three successive presidents (Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant) a government director of the Union Pacific Railway. He devoted himself to securing the best possible location and the lowest feasible maximum grade through the Rocky Mountains. His report to the secretary of the interior, November 14, 1862, showed that the actual cost of constructing and equipping the road was much less than the government subsidy and thus led to the famous Crédit Mobilier investigation.
On January 19, 1869, Williams was appointed receiver of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, with the heavy responsibility of saving a land grant worth seven million dollars by completing twenty additional miles of road through a section remote from settlements within fifty days after the yielding of the frost. He finished this task eight days ahead of the time limit and completed the rest of this 325-mile project in October 1870, performing the duties of both receiver and engineer.
In June 1871 he was appointed chief engineer in charge of the completion of the Cincinnati, Richmond & Fort Wayne Railroad, which opened, through the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, a route from Cincinnati to the valuable pineries of northwestern Michigan.
He had become an active member of the Presbyterian Church, and was one of the original directors of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest, later McCormick Theological Seminary.
He was married November 15, 1831, to Susan, daughter of William Creighton and Elizabeth (Meade) Creighton of Chillicothe, Ohio.
