My Genealogy Hound

ED. L. WILLITS. Two of the first settlers in the town of Alma, Harlan county, two of its most active business men and two who have been as largely interested in its general growth and prosperity as any other two men of the place, are Wells and Ed. L. Willits, father and son. Their business relations and interests have been so intimate that it is impossible to write of them separately, and we shall therefore embody in this sketch the facts concerning both, premising what we shall say of their settlement in the town and their business interest there by some general facts of their early history, which will be in keeping with the purpose of this volume as a memorial record. And to make the writing as well as the understanding of the narrative as easy as possible, we shall begin at the beginning.

The name Willits is of German origin — “Pennsylvania Dutch” is the designation given it in the traditions of the family. The man who brought the name from Pennsylvania to the West was Jesse Willits, grandfather of Wells and great-grandfather of Ed. L. Willits. He moved to central Ohio at an early date and settled on the Hocking river, where he lived some years; thence, in 1812, he moved into what is now Wayne county, Ind., and thence, in 1833, to western Illinois, settling within about four miles of the Mississippi river. There he died, well advanced in years. As these facts show, he was of a restless disposition, inclined to ramble and kept well on the frontier all his life. Like thousands of others who started with the great tide of immigration that poured through the mountain gorges of western Pennsylvania and Virginia and spread out about the beginning of this century over the rich bottoms of Ohio and the fertile prairies of Indiana and Illinois, he found it hard to take up his permanent residence in one place and tie himself down to the uneventful business of farming, once having tasted the pleasures of pioneer life and been fascinated with its dangers. He was a typical American pioneer, such as has passed into our literature and fiction. His son, however, Eli Willits, father of Wells Willits, and grandfather of Ed. L. Willits, was a man of different disposition, although he knew much of pioneer life and it may be presumed had some taste for it. He was born on the Hocking river, in Ohio, but in exactly what locality can not be told, and was reared there to the age of eleven or twelve, when, as already stated, his father moved to Wayne county, Ind. There the younger Willits grew to manhood, married and settled down and spent his life. The lady whom he married was a native of Ohio, being a daughter of one of the first settlers of the central part of the state and of Welsh extraction. These pursued the peaceful paths of agriculture, living the life common to their calling, being plain, industrious, useful citizens and succeeding in a worldly way reasonable well, in accordance with their means and opportunities. The father died in 1856, having reached the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the mother died some years later. Among their children was Wells Willits one of the subjects of this sketch.

Wells Willits was born in Wayne county, Ind., in 1827, and was reared on his father’s farm to the age of twenty-one, when he moved to Mercer county, Ill., took an academic course in Knox College at Galesburg, and then began clerking in a store. He clerked till 1854, when, with what he had saved during this time, he was enabled to go into business for himself, and accordingly opened a store at New Boston, Mercer county, that year. He was engaged in the mercantile business at that place for twenty-one years, during eighteen years of which time he carried on a pork-packing establishment which he started, and for more than twelve years a milling business, which he also started during the time. He closed out his interests there in 1878 and came West with a view of investing and locating. Going to Alma in July, 1878, when the town consisted of only a house or two, he traded for all the vacant lots which had not been given away, these being about 275 in number, and decided to locate and make that his home. He took up his permanent residence in Alma in December of that year and about the same time bought forty acres of land lying on the north side of the town, which he platted in the spring of 1879 and began selling off along with those previously purchased in the original town site. The town, it will be remembered, took its start to grow in the spring of 1879, and during that and the following year, Mr. Willits sold a large part of the real estate he had purchased. He took a homestead in Harlan county about that time and began trading considerably in lands, continuing even to the present time. In 1881 he took an interest with his son in the mercantile business in Alma, becoming a member of the firm of Willits & Co., which interest he still retains. He has considerable farming and stock interests in Harlan county, and although past his sixtieth year still leads an active life, personally superintending all his own affairs.

Mr. Willits was married while still a resident of Wayne county, Ind., his wife before marriage being Miss Rachel C. Lair, a native of Fayette county, Ind.; her parents, being Kentuckians by birth, moved into Indiana soon after the War of 1812, leaving the south on account of the institution of slavery, which they were unwilling to help perpetuate. Of this union only one child now survives — Ed. the L., pioneer merchant of Alma.

Ed. L. Willits was born in New Boston, Mercer county, Ill., in 1854, was reared in his native place, and after finishing his primary education went into his father’s store at the age of eleven. Leaving there when his father did, he went to Iowa and came from there to Nebraska in 1879, locating in Alma in March of that year, and embarked at once in the mercantile business. At first he was alone, but shortly afterwards he sold an interest in his business to L. B. McManus, now president of the First National Bank, which interest, after about two years, he bought back and then sold to his father. The firm is now, and has been for some years, Willits & Co., the general supervision and practical management of the house and its business being entirely in the hands of Ed. L. Willits. Willits & Co. are the proprietors of the “People’s Store,” one of the old landmarks of the town of Alma, and headquarters for everything in the line of general merchandise. They have sold from this establishment and from the one it succeeded, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of goods in years gone by and the full stock of bright new goods which now line their shelves, is evidence that there is no falling off in their trade — no abatement in the confidence of the buying public in their square dealing. Willits & Co. are also proprietors of the Alma creamery, a home industry started by them in 1887 and which has been running successfully since.

Ed. L. Willits was a young man when he came to Nebraska. He is not an old man now, but he was then unmarried, having just passed his twenty-fourth year. He married in May, 1882, the lady whom he took to wed being Miss Blanche Conklin, daughter of T. J. Conklin, one of the first settlers of Harlan county, coming from Illinois, near Chicago, where Mrs. Willits was born.

The foregoing facts will serve to show what the gentlemen mentioned in this sketch have done as men of business. It remains only to be said that they have borne as active a part in the general development of their adopted town and county as could reasonably be asked at their hands, giving up their means and lending their own efforts to every enterprise or interest of a commendable sort, which has sought favor at their hands.