Willis Cammack
So closely identified with Grant County affairs was the late Willis Cammack that, although a native of Bartholomew County, he seemed to have always lived in the community. He came as a young boy to Fairmount with his father, James Cammack, at a time when there was only one house in the town. James Cammack set up a saw mill, and from his plant was supplied much of the material for the building in early days of that village.
Willis Cammack was a son of James and Penina (Cook) Cammack. In 1849 the parents located in Grant county, and afterwards moved to Hamilton County. There were five other sons: Calvin, William, Albert, Clark and Ira, and one sister, Elvira Cammack. Willis Cammack was the only one who continued to live in Grant County.
There was a romance in the early life of Willis Cammack and Sarah Jay, and the outlines of the story may be properly sketched at this point, as part of the family records and as a matter in which subsequent generations will take an interest. Nathan Morris had a son and daughter, Thomas and Ruth Morris. Thomas Morris had plighted his troth with Sarah Jay while Ruth Morris was promised to Willis Cammack. Both the Morris young people were stricken with typhoid fever. Mr. Cammack and Miss Jay went and nursed them, but the fever was so virulent that all care and nursing were in vain, and both the young man and the young woman died. The fever was a scourge in that part of the country in that year, and so widespread that there were often as many as two funerals in a single day from the same neighborhood. the death of Thomas and Ruth Morris bereaved both Willis Cammack and Sarah Jay, and in their grief and sorrow they turned to each other for sympathy and solace, and the result was that their lives were linked together ever afterward, and not long after the intimate acquaintance formed while in the Morris household in 1857 they were married. All were Quaker families and well known to each other.
Sarah Jane was a daughter of Thomas and Eliza (Wareham) Jay, and her brothers and sisters were: Joseph, Denny, Mary, Rebecca, Angelina, Daniel and Ezra. Of this family of eight Joseph Jay was a resident of Richmond and all the others of Grant County, and all of them well known in their generation. Thomas Jay was a well known Friends' minister, and after the death of his wife married Miss Elizabeth Rush, and together they went about the country a great deal in the service of the church. After the death of his second wife, Thomas Jay always lived in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Cammack.
The children born to Willis and Sarah (Jay) Cammack were Rosalie, who married Orange Peters, and had one son, Charles Peters, an invalid from birth and now deceased; Bayard T., who married Mattie Osborn, and had two children, Carl and Mary; Flora A., the wife of E. H. Ferree, has two children, Edna S. and Evan Mark )see sketch of Ferree family); Ella is the wife of W. E. Waggoner, and has two children, Sarah and William; William T. married Emlin Cox, and their two children are Jerry Ward and Hazel; and Edgar married Catherine Harris.
On January 4, 1883, Willis Cammack married for his second wife, Mrs. Elizabeth (Cornelius) Cammack, widow of his brother, Albert Cammack. She brought to her second husband a daughter, Sulla, and to the second marriage was born another daughter, Laverne, who married Demetrius Howell. Their children are Kenneth and Willis. Four of the Cammack grandchildren are married and live outside of Grant County, namely: Edna S. Ferree, wife of E. H. Harris; Jerry Ward Cammack, who married Mittie C. Hurley; Carl, who married Margaret Wright; and Mary Cammack, who married Fred Goldsmith. Mrs. Ferree is the only permanent resident in Grant County among the children in the Willis Cammack family. Sula Cammack, the child of the second Mrs. Willis Cammack, married R. E. Felton, and left a daughter, Edith Felton.
While the family of Willis
Cammack are deceased and scattered, there was a time when they were well known
in the Bethel Friends Community, and there never was a man in all Grant County
who was more universally and highly respected than Willis Cammack. When Bethel
Friends Meeting was established in 1864, David Jay was recognized as the
official head of the meeting until his death four years later, when Willis
Cammack was honored in that way, and continued at the head of the meeting until
his death, although for a few year he was an invalid and unable to occupy the
pew in the meeting house. No one ever questioned his word or his religion, and
he was a man of much influence in the church and the community. The biographer
knew Willis Cammack from childhood. He recalls one occasion of an otherwise
"silent meeting" of Friends at Bethel Church. After the breaking up of the
meeting, which Willis Cammack always performed by shaking hands with the one
sitting next to him, he exclaimed:
Be ye also ready," and the watchword suggested seemed to prevail and influence
his own personal life -a man whose integrity no one ever questioned. For several
years Mr. Cammack was connected with public improvements, associated with his
neighbor, Isaac W. Carter, and with David Overman of Marion. Many miles of
gravel road were built under his watchful eye, and when he died all who knew him
felt a distinctive community loss -that a good man had been removed from things
earthly and that he was worthy of the higher life.
Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914.