When you visit the graves of John Albert Wills, Elizabeth Bissonnette Wills and Elizabeth Frances Wills – they lie together – you will not notice the brickwall under your feet because it is under the ground.
It’s true. In the Catholic cemetery, a brickwall lies deep in the ground separating the coffins of John A. Wills and his wife, Libby Bissonnette. The Catholic church, following the custom of the times, would not allow the body of a Protestant to be buried in its sanctified ground. When John A. Wills, a Protestant who never converted to Catholicism died, his children wished to bury him alongside his wife, Libby and their daughter, Elizabeth Frances Wills. A work around was found. The solution, the vicar told the family, was to build a brick wall around John Albert Will’s coffin. His earthly remains and the little plot would then be separated from the good Catholics who were going to heaven – and his wife. John A. Wills was ostracized and estranged in his death as he was in his life. He was walled off from his wife. His name was never entered into the Catholic church register of the interred in St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Waterford, NY because for the Catholic church, John Albert Wills body was not even there. This was the sad ending of John “Jack” Albert Wills and his wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Bissonnette.
This was the beginning: The story of John and Libby, my Grandparents
On August 18th, 1903, John A. Wills, a bachelor from a devout Methodist family married Marie Elisabeth “Libby” Bissonnette, a young woman from a Franco-American and Roman Catholic family in St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Cohoes, New York, USA.
The bride and groom were first generation Americans. His parents were born in Cornwall, her parents were born in Quebec, Canada. Though John never converted to Catholicism, to marry Libby he agreed to raise any child of the union as Roman Catholic. He and Libby did so with one exception – his eldest son and namesake.
John A. Wills was disowned by his parents for the act of marrying a Catholic. So too, was his older brother, William Henry Wills, and for the same reason. The painful splintering of father and sons ended in estrangement and personal tragedy. Eventually, John A. Wills descended into chronic alcoholism and died of acute alcoholic intoxication. Libby was ravaged by thyroid disease before the wide availability of thyroxine hormone. The disease eventually killed her.
Personal tragedy has its way of seeping through generations. For John and Libby Wills, their tragedy did not end with their deaths. It carried into the next generation with poverty, poor access to education and opportunity, shame, alcoholic disease, poverty and estrangement.
When I was quite young, I listened to my mother and her sister, Etta, argue about their parents the way many adult children do. It wasn’t until I was older that I began thinking about why and how the Wills family’s story reflected part of America at the beginning of the twentieth century. My great grandparents were working class immigrants; their children were first generation Americans. Some immigrants had great success stories, others did not. Some first generation Americans had great success, others did not. Why the differences? What made success and what made tragedy?
Here is the hypothesis: my grandfather, John A Wills (1873-1937), descended into alcoholic disease, poverty, and despair due to personal reasons – shame, weakness and the estrangement of his birth family. Also playing a part were social economic causes, sharp class distinctions, and discrimination. However, religious intolerance, obstinacy in religious beliefs and lack of family support may have had a bigger role. Then, when it looked liked things couldn’t get worse, the final breaking point, The Great Depression came bearing down upon the family.
As I write, in the third decade of the twenty first century, Americans are still debating race, class, social injustice, sexism, identity and religious intolerance of one kind or another. Religious institutions were the power players that created the community norms of the 19th and early 20th century. Through their teachings and customs, Catholic and Protestant institutions instilled children and adults parishioners with religious bias, fear of persons with different religious beliefs and religious intolerance. It remains present with us today, most prominently in racism, sexism and LGBT discrimination.
I hope to provide background about social issues in 19th & 20 century America such as religious bigotry and intolerance in America, social class and struggles of the immigrant working class, effects of the Great Depression, and cultural adaptation that will help put Wills Family History in context. Additionally, I would like to explore family issues, disinheritance, health and nutrition, death and disease, personal disintegration as well as adaptation, rebirth and resiliency that family members used to coped or not cope. It was never clear how the Wills family got through the decade (1929-1939). The Great Depression provided the final blow; the parents died, daughters married and sons joined the CCCs, the US Army and Marines. With one exception, Elizabeth Frances (1913-1937), the children survived.
