Richard Williams was baptized on January 28, 1606 in the parish of St. Mary the Virgin in Wooten-Under-Edge Near Gloucester, England.

Richard came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 first settling in Dorchester and later moving to Taunton, Massachusetts.

Richard Williams was a freeman of Plymouth June 5,1644 but returned to Dorchester where he was a town officer in 1658.

He and his wife Frances Deighton came to Massachusetts in about 1636 and seem to have settled in Dorchester. They were members of the first church established in that town. Soon afterward they moved to Taunton, Massachusetts, where Richard had purchased land in about 1636/1637.

Richard was one of the original purchasers of Taunton from the Chanset Indians. He is called "The Father of Taunton".

Their first farm, of over 100 acres, was on the east side of the Taunton River. Richard Williams' name is the second on a list of the "first purchasers" of Taunton. The land was purchased in 1637 from the General Court of Plymouth Colony and is known as the Tetiquiet Purchase. It includes the present towns of Taunton, Raynham and Berkeley. Captain Miles Standish and John Brown fixed the boundaries in 1640. Richard also made purchases of land in 1668, 1672 and 1680.

The town of Dighton, Massachusetts, is named to honor and perpetuate his wife's family name of Dighton (Deighton).

Richard Williams was a tanner; a deacon in the church and at the time of his death was primary owner of the Taunton Iron Works that his wife continued to administer after his death.

Taunton is the oldest settlement in Bristol County and third oldest in the Plymouth Colony. It was incorporated in 1639.