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COLLINS C. WILLIAMS
Vol. 3, p. 1073

The law department of the University of Oklahoma in recent years has
graduated some of the most successful lawyers of the state, and
probably none has found himself more admirably adapted to the
profession than has Collins C. WILLIAMS, of Ada, for he has been
unusually successful financially and in the hold he has gained in the
profession. Legal talent is a characteristic of the family. Mr.
Williams' brother, Robert L. Williams, was a member of the Oklahoma
Constitutional Committee and the first chief justice of the Supreme
Court of the new state, and in 1914 was elected its third chief
executive. The ambition to amount to something in the public service
and leave the best mark of a high calling has been of most
consequence for a number of years in Governor Williams, and he had
the same ambition for his brother, whom he took up from a small town
in Alabama and educated in legal and literary work.

Collins C. Williams was born in Alabama, in 1891, and is a son of
Jonathan and Sarah (PAUL) Williams. The family is one of the best
known among pioneer residents of Alabama. Mr. Williams' paternal
grandfather was a pioneer Methodist preacher of Pike County, and so
extended became the family interests that it had its own church and
burying ground in that county. Mr. Williams secured his primary
education in the public schools of Alabama, after which he attended
the Southern University, at Greensboro, Alabama. He came to Oklahoma
in 1909, and the following year entered the University of Oklahoma.
In 1912 he graduated from that institution with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts, and that year completed two years of the
institution's law course. He was admitted to the bar in 1912, and
established himself at Ada for the practice of law, forming a
partnership, after practicing for awhile, with J. W. DEAN. Later he
became junior member of the firm of CRAWFORD, BOLEN & Williams, and
with that firm remains.

As a student at the University of Oklahoma, Mr. Williams took a
lively interest in oratory and debating and delivered a number of
addresses that show his character as a student and public speaker. He
represented the University of Oklahoma in an interstate debate with
the University of Colorado, at Boulder, Colorado, in 1912, and won
the debate. In a contest that year held to select the Oklahoma team
for the Missouri Valley debate, Mr. Williams was defeated by Streeter
SPEAKMAN, who afterwards became county attorney for Lincoln County,
Oklahoma. Mr. Williams is a member of the Alpha Tau Omega college
fraternity and the Pontotoc County and Oklahoma Bar associations, and
holds membership also in the Young Men's Democratic League of
Oklahoma, of which he was one of the founders and for which he
assisted in writing the constitution. Mr. Williams' religious
connection is with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, while his
fraternal affiliations include membership in the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, the Modern Woodmen of America and the Loyal Order of
Masons. His residence is at Ada.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Jacque Hopkins Wolski, November 25, 1998.