MRS. HATTIE A. WILL

Butte County

Biographies

MRS. HATTIE A. WILL

MRS. HATTIE A. WILL.--The transformation wrought in California during the past forty or fifty years is due in large measure to the energy and patient perseverance of those pioneers who, having left comfortable homes in more settled portions of the world, identified themselves with the Golden West and by the hardest kind of labor, self-denial and much privation evolved out of its crudity the present day of civilization with its many comforts and favoring conditions. Such a pioneer family is represented in the person of Mrs. Hattie A. Will, whose husband, William Washington Will, was born in Iowa on January 13, 1857, and died at Oroville, April 25, 1911. When about sixteen years of age he came with his parents, Hiram and Jane Will, across the plains. The father was a blacksmith and had three sons, all of whom also learned the blacksmith trade, and at the same time became good mechanics. Hiram Will settled at Gridley, where he had a shop and where he died, and where his good wife died also, the mother of three sons and two daughters, who grew up, and of whom one son and two daughters are now living.

The oldest of these children, William W., was brought up in Iowa until he was well into his middle teens, and there attended the public school. As has been said, he learned the blacksmith trade and worked with his father, and when the latter died the son sold out and William came to Oroville. He bought an interest in the firm of Springer and Will, but later he was in business for himself on Huntoon Street, where his shop, with its red front, was long a familiar landmark.

When he finally disposed of this business, over tweny years ago, he started a nursery two miles south of the town, on what is now the Howe Addition to Oroville, and there he had all kinds of nursery stock. While there he set out forty acres of French prunes, in South Thermalito, and when the nursery was five years old he sold it and continued in the orchard business with George Gable as partner. They gave attention to prune culture, and especially to the raising of French prunes, and in the meantime he bought the residence at 1203 Bird Street, where he died in 1911. He was a Republican in national politics; a strong advocate of temperance; and Odd Fellow, a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Chosen Friends, and in early days was a member of the Good Templars. As a citizen he did his duty as a member of the grand jury.

On May 23, 1886, William Washington Will was married to Miss Hattie A. Sligar, who was born two and a half miles from Oroville, the daughter of Emerson Sligar, a native of Kentucky, who was married in Tennessee to Miss Amanda Spradling. She was born in old Virginia, and when ten years of age came to Tennessee with her parents. Grandfather Spradling had been in the War of 1812, and the family was of the sturdiest stock. Emerson Sligar removed to Missouri with his wife and three children, and his mother and her family of eleven or twelve children, crossing the plains in 1857 with the usual ox-team train. They camped with great care, using the wagons to form a corral around the tents, and yet they were attacked by the Indians, escaping, however, without loss of life. Once the Indians stampeded their stock and stole some of the animals. On their way they came upon the dead members of a train attacked and partly massacred by Indians, and stopped to bury the same. Among the unfortunates they found a woman who was scalped but not dead; they brought her with them to California and she recovered, when a purse was made up and she was sent back east to her friends. The Sligar train left Missouri with a hundred wagons, and came by way of Salt Lake, and after leaving there the party divided, one half coming by way of the Lassen Cut Off, and the other by the Lassen Route and Honey Lake Valley and Big Meadows. Most of them settled in Butte County between Gridley and Biggs, and their descendants became prominent and extensive farmers.

Mrs. Will's father first settled near Oroville, and then crossed the river near Gridley, where he took government land and improved it, and this he owned until he died at the age of fifty-two. His wife survived him until 1909, and she passed away at the age of eighty-five. The eighth child, and the first one born in California, Hattie Sligar, was educated in the public schools near Gridley, and there remained until her marriage to Mr. Will.

Since her husband's death she managed the orchard until 1913, when it was sold to a dredging company. Three children blessed her life: Lucile, a graduate of the Oroville high school and the Chico State Normal, was a teacher for five years and then became the wife of Frank G. Mooney, of Marysville; Maud, a graduate of the Oroville high school and the Chico State Normal, is now a public school teacher at Oroville, and a member of the Northern California Teacher's Association; and Willard Wilson is attending high school at Oroville. A member of the Rebekahs in which she is a Past Noble Grand, and of the Women of Woodcraft, Mrs. Will is also a member of the Methodist Church and its official board, was a teacher in the Sunday School, and was president of the Ladies' Aid Society. In national politics, she is a Republican. Her daughter, Maud, is a member of the Native Daughters of the Golden West and the Rebekahs.

Transcribed by Sande Beach.

Source: "History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 744-745, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.

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