  Donald Williams was born on 28 May 1899 in Crows Landing, California, at that time a strongly rural district, and died in Fallbrook, also in his beloved California, and also at that time far from cities, on 16 January 1983. His father was Joseph Cary Williams, who seems to have been a jack of all countrymen’s trades; his mother Lula Crow, a local farmer’s daughter. Donald was the first in his family to pursue an academic education. After studies in English Literature at Occidental College (BA 1923), he went to Harvard for his Masters, this time in Philosophy (AM 1925). He then undertook further graduate study in philosophy, first at the University of California at Berkeley (1925–27), then at Harvard, where he took his PhD in 1928.