Elisha Williams

Elisha Williams (August 24, 1694 – July 24, 1755) was a Congregational minister, legislator, jurist, and rector of Yale College from 1726 to 1739. The son of Rev. William Williams and his wife Elizabeth, née Cotton (daughter of Rev. Seaborn Cotton), he was born at Hatfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, graduating, at the age of seventeen, in 1711. His first wife, and mother of his seven children (only two of whom survived him), was Eunice Chester, They were married in 1714; she died in 1750. After his marriage he studied law, and was a member of the Connecticut legislature from Wethersfield for five sessions, the first in 1717; he studied divinity with his father and was ordained a clergyman in 1722, and served the church at...