Samuel Williams (ca. 1759–1841), merchant, diplomat, and banker, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. A nephew of TJ correspondent Timothy Pickering, he graduated from Harvard University in 1780. President George Washington appointed Williams consul at the port of Hamburg in 1796, and in 1797 President John Adams moved him to the consulship at London. TJ removed him from office in 1801 due to his failure to render accounts to the State Department as instructed. Williams remained in London thereafter and concentrated on building his banking business. He became a leading creditor for American merchants engaged in business abroad, acquired stock in the Bank of Scotland in 1818, and was a director of the Provincial Bank of Ireland in 1825. Williams went bankrupt in the latter year and subsequently returned to the United States. He died in Boston (Harvard Catalogue description begins Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1925, 1925 description ends , 172; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 1:217, 253 [21, 22 Dec. 1796, 4, 5 Dec. 1797]; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 44 vols. description ends , 33:673; Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser., 1:357–8; London Morning Post, 2 Oct. 1818; London Examiner, 30 Jan. 1825; Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 31 Oct. 1825; Stephen W. Williams, The Genealogy and History of the Family of Williams [1847], 329; Haverhill [Mass.] Gazette, 30 Jan. 1841).