San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ANSEL S. WILLIAMS
In preparing our coming citizens by
training their minds and hands and bodies for maximum effectiveness Stockton’s
public schools are doing wonderful work.
At their head is Superintendent Ansel S. Williams. Trained at Stanford and Yale Universities,
Mr. Williams has inaugurated and carried out a constructive upbuilding of the
public school system that began in the adoption of a $596,000 bond issue two
years after he took office. Hence
Stockton pioneered in the erection of brick and reinforced concrete edifices
for her children, steps in which most California cities have since
followed. This distinguished educator is
a native of California, born in Tuolumne County August 20, 1876. He is the son of Alvaro and Mathilda (Georges) Williams, the former a Californian and
the latter and Iowan.
Grounded educationally as a pupil of
the Stockton schools, Mr. Williams was graduated from the Stockton high school
and from Leland Stanford University, graduating from Palo Alto’s great
institution of learning in 1903. Then
Mr. Williams took a post-graduate course in Yale University in 1904. He specialized in history and economics and
history at both these universities. From
1904 to 1909 he was head of the history department of Stockton high school, and
in 1911 was appointed superintendent of Stockton’s schools. The enrollment has doubled since then and
mounts steadily. As the municipality had
faith and vision, its school buildings were put on a modern basis at no special
hardship, financially, to the taxpayers.
This was done by issuing 498 grammar school bonds at $1000 each, falling
due from the third to the thirty-fifth year, successively, and ninety-eight
high school bonds, falling due from the third to the twenty-second year. Three new grammar schools and five four-room
additions to present edifices, the best of heating and ventilating systems for
all, and manual training and domestic science departments as well as gymnasiums
were authorized by the bond issue of 1913.
The result has been that the number of boys enrolled has been greatly
increased as compared with the preponderance of girls. The course of study gives practical
preparation early for the pupils on which to build for the future; it holds the
youths in the schools longer and turns them out better equipped, while the
physical training gives a well-rounded development rather than making
specialized athletes.
Mr. Williams in a fraternal way is
associated with Morning Star Masonic Lodge, and is also a member of the Rotary
Club. His wife was Miss Edna Marion
Small, a native of Stockton, and descended from an historic pioneer family of
Stanislaus County. They have two
children, Ansel S., Jr., and Marian Yale.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
551-552. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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