The Gallery
- Hours: Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm, plus some Saturdays (please call ahead).
- Visitors: Get directions, parking, and additional visitor information.
- Researchers: Please schedule your visit ahead of time.
The Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana Gallery presents one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive collections of materials relating to the 16th President. The Gallery displays over one hundred of the most important artifacts from the Williams Collection, illustrating Lincoln's career as a lawyer, public servant, politician, and President; his life as a husband and father; and his tragic assassination. Also included are cultural pieces memorializing Lincoln, including paintings, statues, books, and memorabilia. Visitors will discover the context of the era and the complexities of the war years and of slavery.
Frank J. Williams was inspired as a child by a classroom portrait of President Lincoln. Throughout his life he has collected documents, manuscripts, images, signatures, and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln, and has become one of the nation's foremost authorities on the 16th President.
Each exhibit in the Gallery includes commentary from Chief Justice Williams on the relevance and importance of the objects and his reasons for collecting them. This first-person account gives context to the exhibits and allows visitors to appreciate the Collection on a more personal level. A large-screen interactive display invites visitors to view more objects form the Collection and to hear more in-depth commentary on the importance of collecting and the use of primary source evidence and research in authoring books, presenting research and historical retrospectives, and creating films and documentaries.
The Williams Collection of Lincolniana Gallery is next to the Ulysses. S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum on the 4th floor of Mitchell Memorial Library at Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS.
About the donors
Rhode Island Chief Justice (Ret.) Frank J. Williams & Virginia Williams, Hope Valley, Rhode Island
Justice Frank J. Williams is a native of Rhode Island. Justice Williams graduated from Boston University School of Law and is a long-time jurist in the Rhode Island court system. He is a veteran of the United States Army, having served three years in Germany and one in Vietnam. Justice Williams is also the founding chair of The Lincoln Forum and a long-time president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association. He is a scholar whose books include The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (with Edna Greene Medford and Harold Holzer, Louisiana State University Press, 2006) and Lincoln Lessons: Reflections on America’s Greatest Leaders(with William D. Pederson, Southern Illinois University Press, 2009). Justice Williams is a member of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and chair of the Rhode Island Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. In 2007, the Pre-law Society of Mississippi State University awarded Justice Williams its prestigious Jurist of the Year Award.
Speeches and Book Discussions with Justice Williams
Virginia Williams was born and raised in Texas. She graduated from North Texas State University. After graduating, she taught overseas for the Department of Defense, before teaching kindergarten in Cranston, Rhode Island for twenty-nine years. Later, she acquired an interest in outhouses, about which she lectures all over the country. She serves as Chair of the Museum of Primitive Art in Peacedale, RI, and as Deacon of Dunn’s Corners Presbyterian Church in Westerly, RI.
