A Transcript of the Illuminated Address presented to William Williams in 1898

To William Williams
Adelong Crossing

Dear Sir,
We the undersigned on behalf of your many friends and admirers in
Adelong and surrounding district, take this opportunity
On Your Ninety-eighth birthday of visiting and congratulating you on
The attainment of such a ripe old age, and we assure you that your
many friends are pleased to know that your faculties are still
unimpaired and that you are enjoying life.

We wish you many happy returns of this day and hope we will have
the opportunity of meeting and congratulating you on the

Attainment of the Century.

In Adelong your name will be evergreen, because you were
associated with the first to unearth and prove payable quartz reefs
there.

To your credit also is the

Pioneering Work of prospecting through the barren ground (when
first chutes of gold ran out) and proving the existence of second
chutes of gold, the finding of which has made Adelong so noted as a
gold producing field.

We have visited you today to show you we appreciate
             Your Energies in Mining Development
in the past at Adelong. We have had one of your photographs
enlarged and wish you to consent that it be presented to the
Trustees of the Adelong Literary Institute to be hung in the Reading
Room so that generations to come may be induced to enquire and
learn the vast amount of good you did for mining, etc. in Adelong
                           in the early days.

Trusting it may please God to sare you for many more years.

We are, Yours sincerely,

(signature of 13 citizens of Adelong)

Adelong 3 May 1898.