Rachel and Maria Williams circa 1870

The city of Utica has many reminders of half-brothers Thomas and Frederick Proctor, whose philanthropic undertakings were numerous. A school, parks, and monuments have been erected and named in their honor around the city. But what about their wives? They too made invaluable contributions to the Utica area.

The two Williams sisters — heirs to the fortune of their mother, Helen Elizabeth Munson Williams, one of the richest women in the country — married the brothers in mid-life. Maria was 38 and Rachel was 44 when they wed.

Following the example of their mother, who donated large sums to Grace Church, they used their wealth alone and in concert with their husbands to make enduring impressions on the community in the areas of health, recreation, the arts, charity and religious life. The sisters were alike in their philanthropy, but each expressed it differently.

Rachel

Religion and health played a large role in Rachel's giving. In 1912, Rachel returned from England with a mission. She expanded an Episcopal sisterhood, the Sisters of St. Margaret, from sites in England and Boston. She ensured the work of the sisters would continue by willing them most of her large estate upon her and her husband's deaths.

In addition to her interest in the Sisters of St. Margaret, she and Frederick built and furnished a new hospital for St. Luke's Home and Hospital on Whitesboro Street in 1904.

Rachel also made many contributions to Grace Church, but Maria was cited in a newspaper account as giving to the family church than any other individual had given to any church in the city. In addition to rebuilding the church spire at a cost of nearly $93,000 when it was found unsafe, Rachel and Frederick had the 70-room parish house built for $443,000.

Rachel loved music, art and tasteful surroundings. The beautiful appealed to her. She was choir director at Grace Church and occasionally slipped in to play the organ at services when the regular organist was ill. One of the few women drivers in those early days of the automobile, Rachel had a Mercedes named Bluebird.

Rachel had no children, and Maria had a son who did not survive birth.

Maria

Maria was a strong-willed woman and she had the wealth and prominence to ensure her will was carried out.

She, Frederick and Thomas decided to establish a center for the, the Proctor-Williams-Munson Institute, arts in Utica. Rachel had died four years before the plan was hatched in 1919. After receiving their charter, the three met the next year and Thomas was elected president. At this same meeting, Maria commenced to change the corporation name to Muson-Williams-Proctor Institute.

In 1926, she squelched plans to tear down Utica's city hall and then donated the cost of painting it.

Maria's contributions leaned to the practical, particularly when the depression had decimated the area economy and banks were in dire straits. In 1931, her fortune still intact, she deposited $1 million to protect banks and reassure customers. Maria was the only one of the four still alive at the time.

The next year, she paid for $10,000 in city hall improvements and required that unemployed workers be used for the job. Later that year she was named Utica's Most Useful Citizen, the first woman to receive the honor. She insisted on dispensing with the usual large public ceremony. She said the money would be better spent on the needy, and she received a few people at her home instead.

In 1932, Maria Watson Williams Proctor took over the failing Bagg's Hotel and had it torn down by hand. She could have had it razed by machinery, but she wanted to provide jobs for as many people as possible in the Great Depression. The lumber from the 120-year-old hotel went to heat area homes. That's the kind of woman she was.

Newspaper accounts of the time describe Maria's modesty and her shrinkage from the limelight. After her husband's death in 1920, she continued to make gifts in both their names.

At the time of her death in 1935, her minister the Rev. Harold E. Sawyer, told the Observer-Dispatch: “Very seldom is there, a person who has touched so many people in so many different walks of life.”