Guide to the Elizabeth Stephenson Williams Papers

Elizabeth Stephenson Williams, a native of Duluth, Minnesota, spent the early years of her youth traveling with her parents in the Carribean and across the U.S. She received her bachelors degree from the University School for Girls, Chicago and later married Harry D. Williams. In 1941 she worked with the Yale University Hospital attached to an army unit conducting Red Cross recreational work at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. Williams followed these assignments with Red Cross work in New Zealand, Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands where she became interested in work with lepers.

After returning to the U.S. in 1945 Elizabeth Williams resigned from the Red Cross in order to return to Fiji as a volunteer worker to study leprosy. She spent the next six years traveling the South Pacific, Indonesia, Malay, Thailand and India as an observer of the leprosy treatment. During her travels she visited the Philadelphia Hospital and Leprosy Home in Ambala City, Punjab and was so impressed with the work that in she decided to return and accept their invitation to work there as a volunteer. With the approval of the PCUSA's Board of Foreign Missions she was designated an honorary missionary, and assumed the post of physio and diversional therapist at Ambala in 1953. On her journey to Ambala Elizabeth Williams attended the International Leprosy Congress in Madrid as a representative of the hospital. In 1956 she took a leave of absence and returned to the U.S. to promote leprosy work and publish her book Doctorji's Clinic. Williams attempted to return to Ambala at the end of the year but the Suez Crisis prevented her journey. She continued to promote leprosy work and maintained her contact with the hospital.