It all started in a donut shop, sketched out on a napkin...

While the vision for Williams-Mystic materialized at a local donut shop near Williams College in Massachusetts, the program's roots go back much further.

In 1955, Philip R. Mallory, a descendant of the great shipbuilding Mallory family of Mystic, and one of the early supporters of Mystic Seaport, encouraged his sister, Cora Mallory Munson, to endow the Frank C. Munson Institute, named for her late husband. The Institute was to function as a summer program in maritime history at Mystic Seaport. Fifty years later, the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies has earned a reputation as a distinguished summer teaching program. In the mid-1970s "P.R." gave further funds to the Munson Endowment for the establishment of an undergraduate program to be held at Mystic Seaport.

Professor Benjamin W. Labaree of Williams College, and a member of the faculty of the Munson Institute since 1966, conceived the notion of a one-semester program in maritime studies after several winters of bringing a group of Williams students to Mystic Seaport for the January term. Professor Labaree and his students sketched the original plan for a Williams-Mystic semester on a napkin in a Dunkin' Donuts, where they paused on the ride back to Williamstown.

After several years of planning with Waldo Johnston, then director of Mystic Seaport, Michael Sturges, then the Museum's director of education, and the Williams administration, Professor Labaree founded the Williams-Mystic Program in the fall of 1977. Today, nearly 30 years later, more than 1,200 students have joined the Williams-Mystic family.