Alpheus S. Williams equestrian statue

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Alpheus S. Williams practiced law in Detroit before the Civil War and went on to become one of the Union Army's most reliable division commanders, fighting at Antietam, Gettysburg and through Sherman's March to the Sea. After the war he served as Detroit's postmaster and later represented Michigan in Congress until his death in 1878. More than forty years later, the city honored him with a bronze equestrian monument by sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady, who also designed the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C. The statue was dedicated in 1921 and placed on Belle Isle, the island park in the Detroit River that Williams himself had helped bring into being as a Detroit parks commissioner decades earlier. It still stands there today, one of several Civil War-era monuments scattered across the island.

1. Honors General Alpheus S. Williams, Civil War division commander
2. Williams later served as a U.S. congressman from Michigan
3. Sculpted by Henry Merwin Shrady, also known for the Grant Memorial in Washington
4. Dedicated on Belle Isle in 1921