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The Background
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profited by questionable transactions within the companies of which he was a director, by absorption of other companies, freezing out the unasserting and helpless minorities.

He was a well-born man. Let the young fellow of good ancestry never forget that he starts with what the lack of to many another is a lifelong handicap. It is a great thing for any man to be well-born.

Isaiah Vansant Williamson found in his early years that he had much to be proud of in his ancestry, and doubtless his resolve not to do anything to tarnish the memory of their honorable and useful lives held him firmly to the upright course of life that marks every footstep of his long and busy days.

Because it has been thought and said that the people from whom he sprang were insignificant as well as poor, it is necessary to set forth at some detail what is known of these Williamsons that settled in Bucks County nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. Hardworking they were, indeed, but fairly educated themselves, they educated their children and trained them to the good-living, common in all the Quaker homes of that period, no