Joseph Hartwell Williams was born on June 2, 1814 with a head start in life. His father was The Honorable Ruel Williams, a former United States Senator, successful lawyer and giant of early Maine politics.
As if this wasn’t enough, his mother was the daughter of Daniel Cony of Augusta.
Young Joseph graduated from Harvard in 1830 and the Dane Law School in Cambridge, joining his father’s successful law practice in Augusta in 1837.
Although originally a Democrat like his father before him, he split with the party in the 1850’s over the expansion of slavery into the territories and what he considered to be a contemptuous treatment of the Missouri Compromise by President Franklin Pierce.
Elected to the Maine Senate and chosen its President in 1857, he almost immediately became acting Governor when Hannibal Hamlin resigned to accept a United States Senatorship.
Asked to run for the Governorship the next year he declined because he disagreed with the prohibition plank in the Republican Party Platform.
Serving as a State Representative from 1864 to 1866 he was elected again in 1873 as an Independent serving from 1874 to 1876. In 1877 the Democrats persuaded him to run for Governor but he was defeated by the Republican standard bearer, Seldon Connor.
Williams died in Augusta on July 17, 1896, perhaps the only serious candidate in the political history of the State to seek office as a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent.
In addition to his political and legal activities, Joseph H. Williams along with his father, Ruel, and Lot M. Morrill were among the founders in 1848 of the Union Mutual Insurance Company.