A Discourse Commemorative of Hon. Samuel Williston
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Samuel Williston was an American button manufacturer and philanthropist.
Background
Samuel Williston was born on June 17, 1795, at Easthampton, Massachusetts, the son of Payson Williston and Sarah Birdseye. His father was a graduate of Yale College, the first pastor of the first church in that town, the descendant of Joseph Williston who was born in Windsor, Connecticut, before 1667 and cousin of Seth Williston.
Education
Samuel obtained his early education in the district school, supplemented by study with his father. He spent a term at the Westfield Academy and a year, 1814 - 1815, at Phillips Academy at Andover but suffered a good deal of difficulty with his eyesight.
Career
After several years in farm work and in stores at West Springfield and in New York, where he became a member of the Brick Presbyterian Church under the Rev. Gardiner Spring, he returned to Easthampton in 1822.
With his father's assistance he bought a farm on which he began to work with energy and enterprise, adding school-teaching during the winter months. To augment the family income, his wife began covering buttons by hand. He promoted the sale of the product, employed others, and in a few years had the buttons covered in a thousand families in western Massachusetts. He formed a partnership with Joseph and Joel Hayden of Haydenville, Massachusetts. They manufactured the product, while Williston promoted the enterprise and furnished the capital.
On the dissolution of the partnership in 1847, the business was removed to Easthampton, where other factories for the manufacture of suspenders, rubber thread, and cotton were established. In addition to his business enterprises in Easthampton, he was interested in business corporations, such as banks, railroads, gas and water-power companies in Easthampton, Northampton, Holyoke, and elsewhere, of many of which he was president. He interested himself in politics, but after a term in the lower house of the state legislature in 1841 and two terms in the Senate, 1842 and 1843, he declined further public office. He is best known as a promoter of religious and charitable enterprises, to which he gave over $1, 000, 000 during his lifetime.
In 1841 he founded Williston Seminary at Easthampton and served as president of the board of trustees for thirty-three years. He became a trustee of Amherst College in 1841 and served the rest of his life. Including the endowment of three important professorships there, his benefactions to Amherst during his lifetime amounted to $150, 000. He was one of the first trustees of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and of the Massachusetts State Reform School. He was a builder and promoter of churches and a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Handicapped by partial blindness, he absorbed the contents of many books through readers and dictated all his correspondence. He died on July 18, 1874, at Easthampton, Massachusetts.