The date and place of birth for Williams is contested. Some sources indicated that he was born in 1869 in Arouca, Trinidad, others that he was born in Barbados in 1867 and travelled to Trinidad with his parents as a young child. He was the eldest son of Elizabeth and Henry Bishop Williams, a wheelwright from Barbados. Williams grew up in Arouca, a village where the majority of residents were of African descent. He attended the Arouca School, which at the time was run by a Chinese Trinidadian known as Stoney Smith.