Williams was born on May 14, 1878, on a remote farm in
Stanislaus County, California. Her mother, Caroline Madsen, was from
Denmark and her father, Charles Williams, was born in
Sweden. Williams came from a large and impoverished family of four sisters and two brothers. At the age of eighteen Williams attended
San Jose State Normal School in California and graduated in 1901. She was a teacher for three years before attending
Stanford University, where she received her
M.A. in 1908. Williams went back to teaching from 1908 to 1911 while studying at the
University of Chicago during the summers. She took a trip to
London, England, in 1911 to research her doctoral dissertation at the Public Record Office. Williams received her
Ph.D. in 1914 and became an instructor in history at Stanford University. Her dissertation, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815–1915, won the
Justin Winsor Prize of the
American Historical Association. From 1914 to 1915 Williams was an instructor in history at
Wellesley College. Williams taught at
Goucher College in
Baltimore as a professor from 1921 to 1940. There she taught one of the first college courses offered in the United States on women's history. From 1918 to 1919 Williams served the government of
Honduras as a
cartographic,
geographic, and historical specialist in relation with its border disagreements with
Guatemala and
Nicaragua. On behalf of the
American Association of University Women, Williams traveled to fifteen Latin American countries to survey their higher education facilities for women in 1926. The
US State Department appointed Williams to serve on a variety of committees dealing with Latin American problems. In 1940 she was presented with a decoration from the
Dominican government in recognition of her work in promoting understanding between the two countries. Williams was an ardent pacifist and feminist, joining the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919 and serving as the president of its Baltimore branch from 1933 to 1939. In 1925, she joined the
National Woman's Party after being convinced by an article she read by
M. Carey Thomas that endorsed its proposed
Equal Rights Amendment. During her 1926
AAUW study of women's education in Latin America, she met numerous feminist and pacifist activists there. She became close friends with the Brazilian feminist
Bertha Lutz, and the two influenced each other's thought and activism. She remained a professor at Goucher College until 1940 when she retired to
Palo Alto, California. Williams died from a stroke in her Palo Alto home on March 10, 1944. Her grave is marked "Teacher, Historian, Pacifist, Feminist." == Legacy ==