Kate Winter's biography of Marietta Holley (_Marietta Holley: Life with "Josiah Allen's Wife_," Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1984) mentions that Williams was an alcoholic, and his alcoholism was a source of anguish to Holley, who crusaded against demon rum in the comic Samantha Allen novels that Williams illustrated. (It seems that Williams often missed his deadlines.) Gregg Camfield