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Individual Page


Family
Marriage: Children:
  1. Cornelius (Neil) Willems: Birth: 15 SEP 1900 in De Pere, WI. Death: 9 FEB 1972 in De Pere, WI

  2. Henrietta Gertrude(Sister Mildred) Willems: Birth: 30 DEC 1902 in De Pere, WI. Death: 17 APR 1999 in Bay Settlement, WI

  3. Bernadine Louise Willems: Birth: 14 NOV 1904 in De Pere, WI. Death: 21 OCT 1998 in De Pere, WI

  4. Leo Willems: Birth: 12 NOV 1906 in Unknown. Death: 8 OCT 1964 in Green Bay, WI

  5. Emma (Sister Marian) Willems: Birth: 27 MAR 1908 in De Pere, WI. Death: 8 FEB 1985 in Bay Settlement, WI


Notes
a. Note:   From a sort of history written by Sr. Mildred Willems, a daughter of John Willems, it was stated that in 1906 the John Willems family moved to Green Bay in a house across the street from LeCaptaine's Store. John worked as a cabinetmaker at a factory about two blocks from the house where they lived.
 The family moved back to De Pere in 1908 when John Willems bought a store at the corner of Main Street and Fifth street and operated this as a general merchandise store. In the year 1915, a modern mercantile establishment was built on the same site . There were two apartments on the second level of the new store. An apartment where John and Hattie Willems lived along with their son, Leo. Neil and Zita Willems and their family lived in the other apartment.
 According to John Willems obituary, he turned over active management of the business to Neil and Leo Willems in approximately 1935, although it states that he continued to "help out" until his death. He was vice president of the Bank of West DePere, which he had served continuously as director since its organization in 1919.
 John participated with a number of De Pere businessmen in purchasing land on the West Side of the bay near the mouth of the Suamico River in the Town of Suamico. He had two cottages there, one of which he rented out and the other for his family's use. I believe he sold the one cottage in the 1940's and then used the one he had rented out. This cottage was next to one owned by his brother Frank Willems. I remember spending a lot of time there as a young boy, along with the rest of my brothers and sisters. John would fish almost every day on the bay, and would return many times with over a hundred fish. He would clean them all and he had so many that we would go door to door in De Pere, selling packages of 25 fish for 25 cents.
 John also was a healer. People would come to him to be healed of the pain of their burns and sprains.
 John continued his cabinetmaking after retirement. He maintained a cabinetmaking shop in one of the sheds behind the dairy which his son-in-law, Elmer Teske, operated.
 Volume 9, page 163 of Brown Series for registration of birth shows Peter J. H. Willems as the given name for John. He was always known as John.



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