1 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
JOSIAH F. WILLARD, 
Late Memtier of the Executive Committee of the Society. 
PREPARED BY DR. J. H. WARREN, ALBANY. 
Among the many zealous and enlightened friends of agriculture in the 
State of Wiseonsin, none have been more devoted and constant than the dis¬ 
tinguished and lamented citizen to whose memory this brief and imperfect 
notice is dedicated. 
Mr. Willard was born in Vermont, in 1806. His parents removed to the 
State of New York when he was ten years old and settled in Monroe county, 
near Rochester. In that vicinity he grew to manhood, devoting himself 
chiefly, after sixteen years of age, first to teaching and then to mercantile 
pursuits. In the autumn of 1841, several years after his marriage, he re¬ 
moved with his family to Oberlin, Ohio, where, for five years, he devoted him¬ 
self assiduously to study, with the manly purpose of supplying as far as possi¬ 
ble, the deficiencies of early education. Ill health obliged him to relinquish 
his plan of completing his college course after he had entered the junior year, 
and he removed to Wisconsin, where he lived fourteen years, carrying on a 
large farm near Janesville, besides holding several important civil offices at 
various times, and being prominently connected with the horticultural and 
agricultural interests of the State. 
Mr. Willard came to Wisconsin in 1846 and located some two miles below 
Janesville, on the east side of Rock River, where he purchased three hundred 
and forty acres of wild land, upon which he made practical demonstrations of 
his theories of agriculture. As early as 1850, though the country was yet 
quite new, he succeeded, by unwearied and continued efforts, in organizing 
the Rock County “Agricultural Society and Mechanic’s Institute,”—of which 
he was elected President—and by liberal contributions of both time and 
money he succeeded, beyond the expectations of its most sanguine friends, in 
