{"id":82,"date":"2023-04-03T19:02:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T19:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/francoamericangravy.com\/wills.\/?page_id=82"},"modified":"2025-06-26T17:10:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T21:10:21","slug":"a-homepage-section","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/francoamericangravy.com\/wills\/purpose\/a-homepage-section\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

When you visit the graves of John Albert Wills, Elizabeth Bissonnette Wills and their daughter Elizabeth Frances Wills, in St Joseph’s Cemetery in Waterford, New York, you cannot know there is a brickwall beneath your feet.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 under you and deep in the ground of this Roman Catholic cemetery, a brickwall was constructed in 1937 to separate the coffins of John<\/span> A. Wills, a Protestant, and his wife, Libby Bissonnette, a Roman Catholic. The Catholic church, following the custom of the times, would not allow the body of a Protestant to be buried in its sanctified ground.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 \u00a0A work around was found.\u00a0 The solution, the vicar told the family, was to build a brick wall around John Albert Will’s coffin.\u00a0 His earthly remains and the little plot would then be separated from his wife and all the other Catholics in St Joseph’s.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

John A. Wills was estranged in his death as he was in his life.\u00a0 He was walled off from his wife.\u00a0 His name was never entered into the Catholic church register of the interred in St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Waterford, NY\u00a0 because for the Catholic church, John Albert Wills body was not even there.\u00a0 This was the sad ending of John “Jack” Albert Wills and his wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Bissonnette.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

This sad ending is the beginning of my story of John and Libby, my Grandparents.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

On August 18th, 1903, John A. Wills, a bachelor from a devout Methodist family married\u00a0 Marie Elisabeth “Libby” Bissonnette, a young woman from a Franco-American and Roman Catholic family in St Joseph\u2019s\u00a0 Catholic Church, Cohoes, New York, USA.<\/p>\r\n

The bride and groom were first generation Americans.\u00a0 His parents were born in Cornwall, her parents were born in Quebec, Canada.\u00a0 Though John\u00a0 never converted to Catholicism,\u00a0 to marry Libby he agreed to raise any child of the union as Roman Catholic.\u00a0 He and Libby did so with one exception \u2013 his eldest son and namesake.<\/p>\r\n

John A. Wills was disowned by his parents for the act of marrying a Catholic.\u00a0 So too, was his older brother, William Henry Wills, and for the same reason.\u00a0 The painful splintering of father and sons ended in estrangement and personal tragedy.\u00a0\u00a0Eventually, 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.\u00a0 The disease eventually killed her.<\/p>\r\n

Personal tragedy has its way of seeping through generations.\u00a0\u00a0For John and Libby Wills, their tragedy did not end\u00a0 with their deaths.\u00a0 It carried into the next generation with poverty, poor access to education and opportunity, shame, alcoholic disease, poverty and estrangement.<\/p>\r\n

When I was quite young, I listened to my mother and her sister, Etta, argue about their parents the way many adult children do.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until I was older that I began thinking about why and how the Wills family\u2019s story reflected part of America at the beginning of the twentieth century.\u00a0 My great grandparents were working class immigrants; their children were first generation Americans.\u00a0 Some immigrants had great success stories, others did not.\u00a0 Some first generation Americans had great success, others did not.\u00a0 Why the differences? What made success and what made tragedy?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Here is the hypothesis: my grandfather, John A Wills (1873-1937),\u00a0 descended into alcoholic disease, poverty, and despair due to personal reasons \u2013 shame, weakness and the estrangement of his birth family.\u00a0 Also playing a part were social economic causes, sharp class distinctions, and\u00a0 discrimination.\u00a0 However, religious intolerance, obstinacy in religious beliefs and lack of family support may have had a bigger role.\u00a0 Then, when it looked liked things couldn\u2019t get worse, the final breaking point, The Great Depression\u00a0<\/strong>came bearing down upon the family.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

As I write, in the third decade of the\u00a0 twenty first century,\u00a0 Americans are still debating race, class, social injustice, sexism, identity and religious intolerance of one kind or another.\u00a0 \u00a0Religious institutions were the power players that created the community norms of the 19th and early 20th century.\u00a0 \u00a0Through 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.\u00a0 It remains present with us today, most prominently in racism, sexism and LGBT discrimination.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

I\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was never clear how the Wills family got through the decade (1929-1939).\u00a0 The Great Depression provided the final blow; the parents died, daughters married and sons joined the CCCs, the US Army and Marines.\u00a0 With one exception, Elizabeth Frances (1913-1937), the children survived.<\/p>\r\n

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When you visit the graves of John Albert Wills, Elizabeth Bissonnette Wills and their daughter Elizabeth Frances Wills, in St Joseph’s Cemetery in Waterford, New York, you cannot know there is a brickwall beneath your feet.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 under you and deep in the ground of this Roman Catholic cemetery, a brickwall was constructed in 1937 … <\/p>\n

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