When he was twenty-seven he married Emily Graves of Williamsburg, Mass. She brought to the marriage partnership a noble heart, and every willingness to help. The story is told that she cut off a button from the coat of a visitor, with his consent, learned how it was covered, and soon furnished work for her neighbors as well as herself. After some years Mr. Williston began in a small way to manufacture buttons, and the business grew under his capable management till a thousand families found employment. He formed a partnership with Joel and Josiah Hayden at Haydenville, for the manufacture of machine-made buttons in 1835, then first introduced into this country from England. Four years later the business was transferred to Easthampton. Mr. Williston did not wait till he was very rich before he began to give. In 1837 he helped largely towards the erection of the First Church in Easthampton. In 1841 he established Williston Seminary, which became a most excellent fitting-school for college. During his lifetime he gave to this school about $270,000, and left it at his death an endowment of $600,000. He was also deeply interested in Amherst College, establishing the Williston professorship of rhetoric and oratory, the Graves, now Williston, professorship of Greek, and some others. "He began giving to Amherst College," writes Professor Joseph H. Sawyer, "when the institution was in the depths of poverty and well-nigh given over as a failure. He saved the college to mankind, and by example and personal solicitation stimulated others to give." He built and equipped Williston Hall, and assisted in the erection of other buildings. He aided Mary Lyon, in establishing Mount Holyoke Seminary, gave to Iowa College, the Protestant College in Beirut, Syria, and to churches, libraries, and various other institutions. He was active in all business enterprises, as well as works of benevolence. He was president of the Williston Cotton Mills, the First National Bank, Gas Company, and Nashawannuck (suspender) Company, all at Easthampton. He was the first president of the Hampshire and Hampden Railway, president of the First National Bank of Northampton, also of the Greenville Manufacturing Company (cotton cloths), member of both branches of the Legislature until he declined a re-election, one of the trustees of Amherst College, of the Westborough, Mass., Reform School, on the board of an asylum for idiots in Boston, a corporate member of the American Board, a trustee of Mount Holyoke Seminary, etc.