Monday, August 20, 2012

Save the Date for a Wills Reunion

If it's not too late to plan, PLEASE save Saturday, November 3, 2012 for the Wills Reunion in Saluda, South Carolina.  More details to follow but here's what I know now:

Who: Various Wills family descendants (mostly descendants of James Drayton and Lizzie Belle Attaway Wills and other Saluda County and (formerly) Edgefield District lines, close relations and friends)
Where: Zoar United Methodist Church, Saluda, South Carolina
When: Saturday, November 3rd (exact time to follow)



There will be a program and there will be some kind of nourishment provided.  Zoar UMC is where many of our Wills ancestors are laid to rest.  The history of Saluda and the surrounding area is full of connections to our past, so plan to stay a few days and do some research or just sight see.

Like I said, more details to follow.

Please contact me at thefamilywills@gmail.com to be added to the email newsletter list.  I know I won't capture all the emails of everyone who should know about and come to this reunion, so please share with them if you can.  Word of mouth always helps.

Best always!

Mark Wills

A Trip to Washington in 1927 and 2012

Earlier this month, I attended the annual Wills Reunion at Silver Lake, Washington.  Sam Wills does a great job organizing this yearly event with the help of some of his family.  I'm sure it helps to have the reunion at the same place or in the same vicinity each year when people are coming from all over,  not to mention sticking with the same month.  So, this year I went to the Wills Reunion and I brought my dad along with me.

It was a really memorable experience!  Dad and I got to meet our cousins who live in Washington and Oregon for the first time and share a lot of information - some of which was completely new information shared within the family.

Our Pacific Northwest cousins all descend from George Travis Wills and Evelyn Marie LeBlanc Wills who moved their entire family (eight children in all) from Louisiana to Washington State in 1927.  Their youngest (and ninth) child, Evelyn, was born in Washington. 

Uncle George was the youngest of James Drayton and Lizzie Belle Attaway Wills' five children.  He moved to Louisiana, married Evelyn in 1909 and started a family.  He worked for the Long Bell Lumber Company in Longville, Louisiana.  In March, 1926, Uncle George left for Washington to join his fellow skilled workers at a huge lumber mill that was built in Longview, Washington.  Longview was a planned township on the banks of the Columbia River.  It was founded by R. A. Long of the Long Bell Lumber Company.

Aunt Evelyn stayed in charge on their 75 acre farm in Louisiana and took care of everything - the kids, the livestock, the running of the household - while Uncle George was away.  Uncle George loved Washington and wrote glowingly of the beautiful weather, lovely mountains and picnics with friends; and sent snapshots with his letters back home.  Anyone who's been to Washington or Oregon will know why he fell in love with the complete change of scenery.

When Uncle George returned home to Louisiana in December, 1926, he had a surprise in store for his family.  They were all going to move to Longview, Washington.  As hard as it is to imagine moving everyone and everything to the uppermost reaches of the continental United States, that's exactly what Uncle George and Aunt Evelyn (and their eight children) did when they began their journey on December 31, 1926.

I was eleven years old in 1972 when I met Granddaddy Wills' (Joe Summers Wills) first cousin, Helen.  Helen was Uncle George and Aunt Evelyn's fourth child and first daughter.  I was living in Laguna Hills, California and Helen paid a visit while my grandparents were out visiting us and that's when I first learned of the Wills who lived in Washington.  It wasn't until I moved to Houston, Texas over 30 years later that I met Helen's daughter, Lee, and her family who live here, too.  I learned that Sam Wills (Howard Benton Wills' grandson) was as interested in the Wills family as I was and he organized a reunion for his family every August.  So, the trip dad and I made out to Washington and Oregon was to attend their reunion and meet some of our cousins on the other side of the country.  Thanks to all who made dad and I feel at home - we both had a wonderful time!  A special thanks to Sam who shared his time and his family with us on Friday when we drove to Mount St. Helens.  It was a great and memorable day - the first of many!

I took excerpts from Helen E. Wills Bachich's first hand account of the trip and move to Washington she made with her dad, mom and siblings, a story called "The Trip", written in July, 1996.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Birthday Spotlight: Joe Summers Wills

Joe Summers Wills, born 8 April 1903 in Stillmore, Georgia, son of Joe Denny Wills and Mary Elizabeth Coleman Wills, died 13 January 1984 in Pasco County, Florida.

While he may have been born in Georgia during the time his father played for the minor league baseball team in the area, Granddaddy Wills was raised in South Carolina where both sides of his family had made their homes for generations.  He became a barber with an impressive following.  On April 8, 1928, he married Addie Lou Holt.  They had four children but only two survived infancy, my father Joe Denny and his sister Patricia Ann (Aunt Pat).

My grandfather loved to hunt and he loved his dogs, birds, garden and he loved to tell a story.  Not a made up one mind you.  His were vivid and accurate remembrances of his youth and life in general.  Later on in the 1940s, he took his wife with children in tow to Pinellas County, Florida where they made their new home.  Since both my grandparents had roots and ties to South Carolina, there were many trips to visit immediate and extended family on Granddaddy's Wills, Coleman and Free side and Grandma Wills' Holt side.

After a short return to South Carolina in 1964-66 they bought property in a new development in Pasco County, Florida called Crestridge Gardens.  In 1966 he and my grandmother moved back to Florida and were part of the growing retiring population that were making the Gulf Coast and state of Florida their retirement home.

Monday, February 7, 2011

What are the odds?

One of the attributes of being a family historian is a knack for remembering birthdays.  My brother, Jeff, and my niece, Jessica, share the same birthday today.  Jeff in 1963 and Jessica (my sister, Julie's daughter) in 1985.  What makes it even more interesting is that they share that birthday with our great (great) grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Coleman Wills Free who was born on this date in 1885!  Now, what are the odds of that?  Notice any other coincidences?  Happy birthday, Jeff, Jessica and Grandmother Free.  Here are some pictures of Grandmother Free.
With her second husband, William Jefferson Napoleon Bonaparte Free

In her yard in Ninety-Six, S.C.

I'd like to thank Gerry Coleman for the scanned images of these pictures.  He has shared so much of what he knows about our Coleman and Wills families and one day I will have pieced it all together.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Christmas in Saluda

There's a Christmas parade in Saluda on Saturday, December 10.  That got me thinking it would be great to share some Christmas or seasonal stories of days gone by.  It doesn't have to be about the Wills family although you're welcome to share that too.  I'll start.

It was the first Christmas Parade I'd been to.  It was 1964 and I was four years old.  I was there with my dad and I don't remember if it was in Greenville or Greenwood.  There was an old lady who was a distant cousin on my Coleman side whose name I don't remember and her grandson.  She knew me as a relation and she pointedly offered that her grandson was "your cousin, Marc "with a 'c'" III, "just like a Lincoln Mark III".  It made such an impression on me.  That moment of awareness to my more distant relations happened when I was watching this beautifully joyous parade on a chilly December morning in a South Carolina town.  I don't think I ever saw them again.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Now, that's what I call a Texas sized turkey.  No, wait, that's Joe Denny Wills (the younger, aka my Dad) with Tom Turkey.  This picture was taken sometime in the early 1990's, probably in Texas.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Time is the root of all this earth...

Remembering Joe Denny Wills, the elder, who left this earth far too soon.

Time is the root of all this earth;
These creatures, who from Time had birth,
Within his bosom at the end
Shall sleep; Time hath nor enemy nor friend.
All we in one long caravan
Are journeying since the world began;
We know not whither, but we know
Time guideth at the front, and all must go.
Like as the wind upon the field
Bows every herb, and all must yield,
So we beneath Time’s passing breath
Bow each in turn, – why tears for birth or death?

Bhartrihari, ‘Time’, translated by Paul Elmer More

Joe Denny Wills, born 15 January 1881, married Mary Elizabeth Coleman 1900, died 8 November, 1904.