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DEVELOPMENT WORK IN MACHINERY
METHODS OF MANUFACTURE
INVENTIONS AND PATENTS
EXPERT TESTIMONY
PHONE HARRISON [illegible]
WILLIAM E. WILLIAMS
CONSULTING ENGINEER
AND EXPERT IN PATENT CAUSES
332 S. LA SALLE ST.
CHICAGO
Setp.[sic] 8, 1927
REPORTS
ON COMMERCIAL VALUES
OF INVENTIONS, PATENTS
AND INVESTMENTS
FOUNDED THEREON.
Mr. Harry H. Laughlin
Expert Eugenics Agt.
Cold Spring Harbor
Long Island, New York
Dear Mr. Laughlin:-
Received your postal card inquiring about my family history in relation to Patent #1617978 dated Oct. 21, 1922. Allow me to say that I have been taking out patents since 1883 and have taken out about one hundred and fifty (150) or more on a wide range of subjects, being, as it were, a professional inventor. I have covered inventions in a wide range of arts including wind mills, railway appliances, wire working and fence machinery, match machinery, foods and milling machinery, automobiles, office equipment, etc., the point being that I invent in order to meet other peoples'[sic] needs and have been doing this since 1884, covering a wide range of forty-three years.
As a general statement, I am a down-east Yankee but I was born at a sawmill in Juneau County, Wisconsin. Were I born three months earlier, I would have been born in Mystic, Conn. My people came from Connecticut as far as that part of it which developed on the American continent is concerned. My father's line traces back to the Mayflower. My father's family lived on a farm on land which my ancestors bought direct from the Indians at Ledgered, Conn., up to the time my father moved west.
However, there is a mixture of Welsh in my father's family. My grandmother on my father's side was of Irish descent, quite a ways back.
My mother's family was of English descent, but a long ways back in the Colonial days of Connecticut. My grandmother's father on my mother's side came from Wolgast, Prussia and was a Swede, while on the other side my grandmother's mother was of colonial stock going back to the English line.
You can put me down as a mixture of English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish developed in the Colonial days of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Yours truly,
[signed]
W.E. Williams.
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