6 out of 7 sisters!
Colleges will often have legacy students—students with a sibling or two also in attendance, or alum parents or grandparents, but it isn’t very often that six out of seven siblings can say they attended the same college. The six Williams sisters who did attend Cornell College must have made their seventh sister, Corita, feel like the oddball of the family. One of the other sisters, Jean Williams Croy ’33, attended Cornell but later left for Iowa State.
That leaves five sister-graduates: Marian Williams Maloy ’33, Virgilia (Jill) Williams ’36, Priscilla Williams Sparks ’38, Naomi Williams Peralta ’46, and Aileen Williams Locher ’48.
Cornell must have made a big impression on the sisters’ mother, Leila Lieberknecht, Class of 1910, who attended Cornell in 1906 but had to quit due to an illness. A few years later she married Harold Ralph Williams, and after the 1929 financial crisis, the family moved to Mount Vernon—specifically for the sisters. Mom and dad Williams wanted them to get a quality education from Cornell.
The Cornell education prepped the sisters for their various endeavors: Marian the librarian, Jean the business consultant and employment counselor, Jill the educator, Priscilla the traveling governmental secretary, Naomi the writer, and Aileen the creative who was a seamstress turned floral designer.
During a family reunion in 1979 at Cornell’s campus and held at the same time as the Cornell alumni weekend (similar to today’s Homecoming), Corita got a taste of what life was like as a Cornellian when Cornell’s Alumni Director Bob Majors ’57 named her an honorary Cornellian for the day.
The Cornell connections don’t end with the sisters in this family! Marian’s daughter, Sara Maloy Gabbard ’66, also attended Cornell, as did three of the sisters’ cousins: Paul Sweitzer ’33, Mark Sweitzer ’34, and Harriet Lieberknecht Warren ’35.
Whew. That is a lot of Cornellians in one family tree. Know any other families that bleed royal purple such as this one? Email cornellreport@cornellcollege.edu
