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Continue reading “The Meaning of Methodism for Cornish Immigrants to America; the Meaning of Intolerance to Me”<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n Continue reading “Assessing the Impact of Disinheritance”<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n Continue reading “The story of Iron Mining and Moriah from “Locks To Lakes””<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n Continue reading “Captain Minnie Clinton – a Wills Cousin”<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n Continue reading “The story of John and Libby, my Grandparents”<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<\/ul>\r\n Welcome to the Wills Family History & Genealogy site.\u00a0 You have come to a very personal place filled with memory, storytelling, fact, conjecture and local history.\u00a0 It is about my mother’s family, the Wills Family and individual’s struggles as immigrants and first and second generation Americans. This is a place for genealogy and sharing Wills family tree, stories passed from fathers to daughters and mothers to sons.\u00a0 Much is from family lore and the personal memories of my mother, my aunts and my uncles.\u00a0 A little historical background about the\u00a0 19th and early 20th century life in upstate New York’s industrial gateway will help to put stories in perspective.<\/p>\r\n It covers a time of serious religious intolerance between Protestant and Catholic groups – and many other groups as well.\u00a0 It was a time of\u00a0 class struggles, labor conflicts, mass immigration, cultural adaptation, rapid change, and manifest destiny.\u00a0 It was a time of several myths -especially the one that told immigrants they could make it to the top if they if they had the will and determination.\u00a0 This myth, held tightly by so many never took into consideration the advantages being the recipient of generational wealth.\u00a0 The heirs of established landowners, the benefits of higher education at elite institutions and the social connections it offered, the opportunity to try and fail but still feed yourself were all overlooked when a wealthy man told the poor man to “pull yourself up by the bootstrap”.\u00a0 The first and second generation of the Wills family struggled during the Gilded Age\u00a0 with its industrial robber barons, the Panic of 1893.\u00a0 the Great War,\u00a0 Then came the Roaring 20s, the\u00a0 presence of the KKK in upstate communities,<\/a> and Prohibition – all followed by the Great Depression of 1929-1939.\u00a0 All these events and movements affected the Wills family in many ways we can never fully comprehend today in the 21st century.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n John Albert Wills<\/strong> and\u00a0Elizabeth Bissonnette<\/strong>, are the focus couple in this Wills Family story.\u00a0 Their nine children and many grandchildren will also be included when I have stories or research that can bring them to life.\u00a0\u00a0As this site and the family story develops in pages and posts, John A. Wills’ parents, aunts and uncles in Cornwall,\u00a0 brothers and sisters in America will be included.\u00a0 Elizabeth Bissonnette’s family will be explored elsewhere in a site devoted to the Franco-American side of her\u00a0 family.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n