WILLIAM A. WILLS, JR.

The following bio was taken from page 449 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

The Wills family tree goes back to Edward Wills, who was born in England in 1758 and came to America with his mother in 1776, landing in Virginia. Edward joined the Continental Army in January, 1777. War Department records show he was promoted to Captain before the war ended. In October 1786 he married Sarah Vaughn in Richmond County, North Carolina. Sometime before 1797, they moved to Jackson County, Georgia, where they raised a large family of eleven children.

Their youngest son, Edward Groce Wills, was my great-grandfather. He married Ophelia Winters. During the Civil War they suffered many hardships, and after the war some of the family started a migration to Mississippi. William Pitchford Wills, my grandfather, who was seventeen at the time, came along to drive one of the wagons for an older sister and her husband. He planned to return to Georgia, but he met my grandmother and stayed on in Mississippi.

Grandmother was Margaret Elizabeth Neely, born in 1846 in Pine Mountain Community near Holly Springs, Mississippi. Grandfather was a farmer and also owned a cotton gin, a lumber mill, and a country store. They raised seven children and lived most of their lives in or near Cornersville, Potts Camp and Winborn, Mississippi. Two of their sons studied medicine, my father Dr. William A. Wills and his brother Dr. John F. Wills, both of whom moved to Ferris, Texas. My father married Jennie Luter, daughter of Rev. J.W. Luter, a Methodist minister. They had three children, two sisters and me. Dad practiced medicine in Ferris and Lancaster, Texas for a few years, then established a pharmacy in Lancaster.

I graduated from Lancaster High School in 1926 and went to work for a wholesale drug firm in Dallas. Nora Lee Keen and I met while working in Dallas and we were married in Lancaster on June 21, 1930. Nora is the daughter of James Edward and Della Keen, farmers near Grapeland, Houston County, Texas.

After many years of desiring a business of my own, I resigned my manager’s position with Parke Davis and Company in 1946 and moved my family to Henderson. From a small warehouse in our backyard at 1310 W. Main, we started a wholesale drug business under the name Star Wholesale Company. The business prospered and later expanded into the retail variety business, having stores in Corrigan, Troup, Carthage, Longview, and Frankston. In 1957 we sold the wholesale business but retained the retail stores until 1964. After a few years of dabbling in real estate, we bought a tract of land in Henderson on the east side of South Evenside and developed Oak Ridge Estates Subdivision. We are presently residing there at 1105 Slaydon.

Looking back over the years, we are very happy to have chosen Henderson for a new beginning. Nora has been a member of the Henderson Sew-Sew Club for thirty-three years, and we both are charter members of St. Paul’s Methodist Church. We have two children, Jo Ann and William E., both residing in Dallas, and three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Submitted by William A. Wills, Jr.