J.R. Williams (1887-1957) was born in Nova Scotia, Canada. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Detroit, Michigan. At age fifteen, he quit school to work as an apprentice machinist in Ohio. Later he worked as a farm hand, first in Arkansas and then in Oklahoma where he perhaps would better be called a cowboy.
In 1922 he turned his hand to cartooning with cartoons centered around ranch life and went on to develop a unique cartooning style.
Machine shops and western ranches were two environments to which Williams returned again and again in his cartoons all through his entire life.
His cartoons were mostly of the kind showing common and amusing situations among working class, small-town folk. He had certain common themes that he repeated again and again in his cartoons. Some of these themes were "Why mothers get gray", "Born thirty years too soon", Life's longest minute", "Heros are made - not born" and "The worry wart". The commonality of the situations William presented made it possible for people to easily recognize themselves. According to one source "Out Our Way" cartoons were the most commonly collected of all cartoons during the 30's and 40's, probably just because of these easily recognized everyday themes.
Here are 66 "Out Our Way" cartoons, a few from the 1930's, but mostly from the 1940's and early 50's.
The first example of J. R. Williams "Out Our Way" cartoons can be seen here. The cartoons here are numbered but not arranged in any particular order. Some browsers will display the number of the cartoon in the lower left hand corner of the window frame. If someone wishes to return to some particular cartoon without looking through the others in the series, this can be done by entering the number of that particular comic strip here.