Jonathan Williams (20 May 1751 – 16 May 1815) was a member of the US House of Representatives (DR-PA 1) in 1815, succeeding Thomas Smith and preceding John Sergeant; he was also Superintendent of West Point from 1801 to 1803 and from 1805 to 1812 as well as Chief of Engineers from 1802 to 1803 and from 1805 to 1812.
Biography[]
Jonathan Williams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 20 May 1751, a grandnephew of Benjamin Franklin. He attended Harvard University and assisted his granduncle with business affairs in England and France. In 1801, President John Adams appointed him a Major in the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers of the US Army, and President Thomas Jefferson made him the first superintendent of West Point in 1801. In 1802, he surveyed the land in Brooklyn, New York that would be named "Williamsburg" in his honor, and he also built Castle Williams and Castle Clinton in New York Harbor. He resigned from the army in 1812 after he was not allowed to command his own castle, and he was elected to the US House of Representatives from Philadelphia in 1814 as a Democratic-Republican Party politician. Williams died in office in 1815.