334 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
placing the society on a permanent basis. Before this Society in 1853 he_ 
as its President—delivered an able address, which was published in the voL 
ume of Transactions of the Wisconsin Agricultural Society for that year. 
His success and the ability and zeal he manifested in the interests of agri¬ 
culture soon pointed him out as a fit person to take a prominent position in 
the management of the affairs of the State Agricultural Society, and in the 
year 1857 he was elected its President, which position he filled with much 
credit to himself, and to the entire satisfaction of the Society and the 
people of the State. His efforts for the promotion of the welfare and useful¬ 
ness of the Society were most earnest and devoted, and must be ever grate¬ 
fully remembered by all true friends of agriculture throughout the State. 
In 1859 he changed his residence to Evanston, Illinois, on account of the 
superior advantages it offered for the education of his children, and of its 
proximity to Chicago, where he contemplated entering into business. “ I 
shall never live elsewhere,” he said, soon after locating there, ” no place 
ever suited me so well as this.” 
In the autumn of 1865 he withdrew from the banking-house of Preston, 
Willard & Kean, (with which he had been for several years connected), his 
health, which had always been delicate, no longer permitting him to engage 
in business. But his interest in the village, and especially in the Methodist 
Church, was more manifest than before, now that he was released from ab¬ 
sorbing occupations of a personal character. 
From the date of his leaving Wisconsin, the relations of the writer with 
him were necessarily less intimate ; and he is, therefore, glad of an opportu¬ 
nity to copy the reference to the last days of Mr. Willard from a published 
account given by his bereaved daughter. In speaking of his last, protracted 
illness, she says: 
“ But for one year he has been missed from his accustomed place in the 
church and in the social meetings, which no one filled more regularly than he, 
when it is possible. For one year his feeble frame has endured untold pain, 
by chill and fever, night-sweat, cough, and all the dreadful symptmos of that 
most terrible disease, consumption. It crept up slowly—allowing him a daily 
respite at the first—attacking him with great violence in the early months of 
summer, pursuing him when he left his home on the lake shore as the chilly 
winds of autumn began to blow, and went to his friends at the East in the 
old, familiar places, hoping much from change of air and scene—confining 
him constantly to his bed for four months—wasting him to a mere skeleton_ 
and, finally, in untold suffering, wresting away his last faint breath-the earth¬ 
ly side. Not so, stands the record, thank God! upon the heavenly side. Al¬ 
most from the first, he thought this would be his last illness, and quietly, dil¬ 
igently, and wisely proceeded to arrange his earthly affairs. No item, how¬ 
ever minute, seemed to escape him. Whatever was of the least importance 
to his family ; whatever friendship, or acquaintance, oa any of his relations 
in life demanded or even suggested, ever so faintly, was done by him. 
“He did not need newly to attune his mind to harmony with the will of 
