Researching Martha Williamson

Martha began her career in television working on musical variety programs for Carol Burnett, Walt Disney Television, and others. She wrote and produced for half-hour comedies such as the long-running The Facts of Life and The Family Man with Gregory Harrison. She made the transition to one-hour drama as producer of Jack's Place for ABC Television and Co-Executive Producer of the CBS series Under One Roof, which starred James Earl Jones. And in 1994 she became the Executive Producer of Touched by an Angel. Currently she is the creator of the TV series Signed, Sealed, Delivered, which has aired since October 2013 on the Hallmark Channel and on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

She was named in 2007 by her publisher as one of the "12 Most Powerful Christians in Hollywood." She became the first woman to solely produce two network television dramas simultaneously.

Touched by an Angel was nominated for nine Emmy Awards and was inducted into the Museum of Television and Radio Hall of Fame. It has been translated into more than sixty languages and continues to be broadcast around the world.

She hosts A Touch of Encouragement on Beliefnet.com.

Her awards include the Freedom Works Award from the U.S. Congress, the Edward R. Murrow Responsibility in Television Award, the Producers Guild Nova Award, the Templeton Prize, as well as honors from the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, the Salvation Army, Catholics in Media.She was appointed to the President's White House Council on Service and Civic Participation.

A native of Colorado, Martha lives in Southern California with her husband, Jon Andersen, and their two children. She is a graduate of Williams College.

Martha Burton Woodhead was born March 6, 1843, in the English town of Rothwell, West Yorkshire, and emigrated with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio, the following year. She was educated in Ohio and later in Iowa, attending Burlington College with an emphasis in philosophy, but never graduated. In 1866 she married Civil War veteran Charles Wesley Williamson, and they had three daughters.

Williamson's journalism career began in 1877, and she was a correspondent for James A. Garfield's 1880 presidential campaign. Her articles appeared in Indiana and Missouri, and in 1882 she became associate editor of the Terre Haute Enterprise in Indiana. She became an active participant in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In 1887 (at age 44) she and her family moved to Los Angeles, California and started collecting seashells. It was in Los Angeles that she became active in malacology, the study of mollusks.

She researched the marine family of gastropods, Mitridae, the miters. She proposed 11 new names for mollusks, at least two of which are still valid: Crepidula naticarum and Crepidula norrisiarum.

Williamson maintained a correspondence with William Healey Dall and J. G. Cooper. She is commemorated in the names of the snail Vitrinella williamsoni and the fossil clam Macrocallista williamsoni. Her papers are held in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.