John A. Wills, born in Port Henry, Moriah, Essex County, New York is at the center of this story. When he was born, his father J.A.B. Wills, was 30 years old and an iron ore miner in his prime. In the 1880 Unites States Federal Census, John A. is six years old, living in Westport, Essex County, New York, USA with his parents and 4 siblings ranging in age from 12 to 5 years old.
The children, including 12 year old Elystra are noted to be “at home”, meaning they were not going to school. Did John and Annie, the two youngest of five children, get a basic education when they lived in Westport? We do not know. There is little information about the family for the next 20 years.
On January 9th 1893, John A. Wills, 19 years old, enlisted in the United States Army in North Adams, Massachusetts. He appears to have only served for one month due to a undisclosed disability.
The next census record is the 1900 United States Federal Census where J.A.B. and Annie Reed Wills along with their son John A. Wills, now 26 years old, are found in Petersburg, Rensselaer County, New York.
Petersburgh, Rensselaer County, New York
Lines 29-31
J.A.B. Wills is recorded as a gardener and his son, John Jr., as a peddler of farm produce. There is no evidence that John A. Wills ventured out on his own from the time of his army discharge until August 26th, 1903 when he married. During those ten years, John A. remained attached to his parents and their home in Petersburg, New York. In 1896 his youngest sister, Annie, left to marry and John A. remained the last child of J.A.B. Wills and Elystra Reed at the Wills home. It is difficult to determine if John A. lacked the money and/or the education to launch himself on his own in the 1890s. What is known is that the United States was mired in a severe economic depression in the 1890s that stymied many young workers from progressing to a degree of economic stability. It was a turbulent time sparked by the panic of 1893, labor unrest in manufacturing cities and the end of good times for the super wealthy industrialists of the Gilded Age. It was also unfortunate timing for John A. Wills who was unable to launch himself independently. He appears to have continued farming his father’s cash crop and peddling the produce in nearby cities and towns using local train transit such as the Troy-Boston Railroad and other lines that transversed the growing industrial corner of the Berkshires. Indeed, John A. Wills traveled the urban rail frequently to sell his parent’s produce to workers in the urban cities – Troy, Cohoes, Lansingburg and Hoosick Falls, and North Adams.
According to family legend, John A. became acquainted with the beautiful brown haired woman, Elizabeth “Libby” Bissonnette, while peddling produce in Cohoes. It was there he met and married “Libby” without the blessing of his parents, steadfast Methodists, who saw his marriage to a Roman Catholic as intolerable. Although John A. did not convert to Catholicism, his Methodist parents could never accept their son’s actions and his Roman Catholic wife. The struggle between John A. Wills and his parents, J.A.B. Wills and Annie Reed, began with his marriage and lasted until the death of his father, J.A.B. Wills, in 1919. However, the emotional cost of estrangement and the final disinheritance haunted John A. Wills to his grave. Initially, John A. appears to have negotiated his break with his parents without a struggle and provided well for his first 3 or 4 children as an itinerant photographer. Their first child, Celena Elizabeth was born in 1904 in Cohoes. By September 1906, when their second child, Anna, was born, the small family is living in Greenwich.
In July 1908, when Julia is born, they are living in Schuylerville, Saratoga County, where they would remain and have three more children, John Albert III, Elizabeth Frances, and Dorothy Mae.
In the New York State Census of 1915, the Wills family is in Schuylerville, Saratoga County, New York:
Some time between 1915 and September 1917, the family returned to Cohoes, where the last three children were born: Etta Muriel, Earl Larry and William Robert. Now, there were nine children: Celena, Julia, Anna, Johnny, Elizabeth, Dorothy, Etta, Larry and Bobby. For the remainder of his life, John A. Wills and his family would live in Cohoes, Albany County, where his wife, Elizabeth, had extended family and her mother, Celena, for support. It was also when John A. Wills’ alcoholism began destroying his family.
