The history of Bill W. — William Griffith Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous — is one of the most consequential personal stories of the twentieth century. Yet the years that shaped him before 1935 are unfamiliar even to many longtime A.A. members. This page traces Bill W. history as the documented record presents it: a Vermont boyhood surrounded by church and Scripture, a devastating fall into alcoholism, a spiritual experience that ended his drinking for good, and a chance meeting in Akron that grew into a worldwide fellowship.
Bill W. History Begins in Vermont
Bill was born on November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont, in a room behind the bar of the village inn his family kept. After his parents’ marriage dissolved, he was raised largely by his maternal grandparents in a town whose life centered on the East Dorset Congregational Church. At Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester, Vermont, he sat through daily chapel services and four years of Bible instruction and was elected president of the school’s YMCA. The religious training of his boyhood is a matter of school and church record — a fact that matters later in the story.
His school years ended in grief: the sudden death of Bertha Bamford, his first love, in 1912 sent him into a depression that foreshadowed struggles to come.
Wall Street, War, and the Bottle
Commissioned an Army artillery officer during the First World War, Bill took his first drinks around 1917 and found in alcohol a release he never forgot. He married Lois Burnham in 1918, and in the 1920s made a name as a Wall Street securities analyst, traveling the country to investigate companies. Drink unraveled all of it. By the early 1930s his career was gone, and between 1933 and 1934 he was admitted four times to Towns Hospital in New York City. There Dr. William D. Silkworth described alcoholism as an obsession of the mind joined to a bodily sensitivity — and privately warned Lois that her husband’s case looked hopeless.
Ebby Thacher, the Oxford Group, and Calvary Mission
In November 1934 an old drinking friend, Ebby Thacher, sat across Bill’s Brooklyn kitchen table — sober. Ebby had found help through the Oxford Group, a nondenominational Christian movement, and behind his visit stood a remarkable chain: Rowland Hazard, an alcoholic told by psychiatrist Carl Jung that only a vital spiritual experience could save an alcoholic of his type, had carried that verdict into the Oxford Group and then to Ebby.
In the days that followed, Bill visited Calvary Rescue Mission in Manhattan, where Ebby was staying, and answered the altar call there. “For sure I’d been born again,” he later wrote of that season. Any account of Bill W. history that omits the mission altar is leaving out a chapter Bill himself recorded.
Towns Hospital, December 1934
On December 11, 1934, Bill entered Towns Hospital for the fourth and final time. Sunk in depression, he cried out for God to show Himself — and was overwhelmed by the sudden sense of light and presence he described for the rest of his life. The obsession to drink left him. He never drank again: thirty-six years of continuous sobriety until his death on January 24, 1971.
Dr. Silkworth assured him the experience was no hallucination and urged him to hold on to it. At Towns, Bill also read William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which persuaded him that transforming spiritual experiences share a pattern: calamity, admission of defeat, and an appeal to a higher Power.
Akron, 1935: The Meeting That Made a Fellowship
For six months Bill preached at drunks all over New York without keeping one sober — though he himself stayed sober by working at it. In May 1935 a failed proxy fight stranded him in Akron, Ohio, at the Mayflower Hotel. Pacing its lobby, tempted by the bar, he chose the church directory on the wall instead. A call to the Rev. Walter Tunks led to Henrietta Seiberling, an Oxford Group member who had been praying for a way to help a physician friend who could not stop drinking.
On Mother’s Day, May 12, 1935, at the Seiberling gatehouse, Bill met Dr. Bob Smith. A meeting planned for fifteen minutes ran for hours. Dr. Bob’s last drink, on June 10, 1935, became the founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Key Dates in Bill W. History
- November 26, 1895 — born in East Dorset, Vermont
- November 1934 — Ebby Thacher’s visit; Calvary Mission altar call follows
- December 11, 1934 — last drink; spiritual experience at Towns Hospital
- May 12, 1935 — meets Dr. Bob in Akron
- June 10, 1935 — Dr. Bob’s last drink; A.A.’s founding date
- April 1939 — the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is published
- January 24, 1971 — dies in Miami, sober 36 years
Study the Documented Record Yourself
The story above is drawn from sources any reader can verify — Bill’s own writings, A.A.’s conference-approved biographies, and the A.A. General Service Office’s own history materials. To go further into Bill W. history and the fellowship it produced, see how the first members actually fared in the early A.A. success rate in the documented record, the Biblical roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, and whether the Bible influenced A.A.’s founding.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Bill W. get sober? His last drink was on December 11, 1934, at Towns Hospital in New York. He remained sober until his death on January 24, 1971.
When did Bill W. meet Dr. Bob? On Mother’s Day, May 12, 1935, at the Seiberling gatehouse in Akron, Ohio — a meeting arranged through the Oxford Group.
Was Bill W. religious? The record shows a Christian upbringing in Vermont, an altar-call decision at Calvary Rescue Mission, and a life-changing spiritual experience at Towns Hospital in December 1934. His later spiritual explorations ranged widely — one reason studying documented Bill W. history, rather than legend, matters.