{"id":11391,"date":"2015-04-08T00:45:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T05:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/?p=11391"},"modified":"2023-06-15T22:01:05","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T03:01:05","slug":"wills-wirt-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wills-wirt-james\/","title":{"rendered":"WILLS, Wirt James"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>City: Memphis<\/p>\n<p><strong>WILLS, Wirt James<\/strong>, chairman water commission; born Memphis, Tenn., Oct. 1, 1863; English-French descent; son of <strong>Peter Branch and Anne Bott (Archer) WILLS<\/strong>; father&#8217;s occupation, merchant; paternal grandparents <strong>William and Ridley (Branch) WILLS<\/strong>, maternal grandparents <strong>Alexander and Mary (Hatcher) ARCHER<\/strong>; educated in the city schools of Memphis, Tenn.; in early life was a traveling salesman; married Oct. 8, 1889; member of Business Men&#8217;s Club, Royal Arcanum, Loyal Assn. National Union and Woodmen of the World; Democrat; elected chairman of water commission of Memphis, Tenn., in 1906; invented the &#8220;Wills System&#8221; of pumping water from wells direct into water mains in 1910; charter member of Wills Stationery Co. and Wills &amp; Crumpton Co.; at present all time and attention given water department of Memphis, Tenn.; member of Methodist church.<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Who\u2019s Who in Tennessee: A Biographical Reference Book of Notable Tennesseans of To-Day<\/em>.<\/span> Memphis: Paul &amp; Douglas Co, 1911.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City: Memphis WILLS, Wirt James, chairman water commission; born Memphis, Tenn., Oct. 1, 1863; English-French descent; son of Peter Branch and Anne Bott (Archer) WILLS; father&#8217;s occupation, merchant; paternal grandparents William and Ridley (Branch) WILLS, maternal grandparents Alexander and Mary (Hatcher) ARCHER; educated in the city schools of Memphis, Tenn.; in early life was a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[261,4415,4062,4419],"tags":[1598,3714,1140,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-11391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-shelby","7":"category-surname-w","8":"category-whoswho","9":"category-x_featured-image-no","10":"tag-archer","11":"tag-branch","12":"tag-hatcher","13":"tag-wills","14":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11391"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14440,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11391\/revisions\/14440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/whos-who\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}