Consider H. Willett, from Chicago and its Distinguished Citizens, p.260-263
Consider Heath Willett was born in Onondaga, New York, December 12, 1940, being the only son of William Jr. and Tryphosa Jackson Willett. The father was botn, lived and died on the clearing made by his father - a farm nestling among the beautiful hills and lakes of Central New York. The trees, fruits, vegetable productions, soils, geological formations, animals, wild and domestic, and occupations surrounding our subject's birth were so varied as to embrace nearly all found in the North. These early awakened his attention, made him an accurate students of mankind from an intimate knowledge of individuas, and taught him natural science from nature's book.
He inherited the parental characteristics, the leading traits of his father's character being integrity, moral courage and an unswerving devotion to conviction. His mother was a genius of idustry, crowning what her hands wrought with beauty and utility.
Fate, with stern decree, shaped the role of his young life. The death of his father - who was all that seemed perfect to his child-mind - brought the blight of a great sorrow, and early matured his manhood. Fatherless at eleven, two years later, through a misunderstanding with his step-father, he found himself afloat upon the sea of life. From this time on he always supported himself, though his mother, at a sacrifice, aided him in obtaining a higher education. His hands were taught how to use tools, and he excelled in various kinds of manual labor, which he sought for the purpose of earning means to acomplish self-education. He worked for several farmers, in a sawmill, as a house painter, in a country store and in a postoffice. In these varied industries he became an apt pupil in the people's college of toil. These early hardships have always placed him in close sympathy with the laboring classes.
Always a student, always a lover of books, he applied himself to study with that devotion to duty which has distinguished his whole life. We find him at Onondaga and Cortlandville academies; also taking a special course in higher mathematics, as a private pupil of Professor H.N. Robinson, at Elbridge, New York; and graduating at the New York State Normal School, at Albany, in 1862. Upon graduating from this institution, he immediately volunteered as a private - when Antietam beckoned to the bloody field - in Company E, organized from the graduates of his school, and attached to the Forty-fourth New York Infantry, Army of the Potomac. He became orderly sergeant by vote of his comrades. Being twice "jumped" for promotion because of political Democratic intrigues, he at length obtained a furlough for the purpose of going before the Military Board at Washington, District of Columbia, of which Major-General Silas Casey was president, to be examined for promotion in the colored troops. As the result of the severe examination for which this board became famous, Sergeant Willett was in August, 1863, commissioned Captain of Company G, Second United States Colored Infantry, ranking with regular army officers. He held his rank until after the war, when having yellow fever at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida, ill-health caused him to resign his commission in September, 1865.
Our soldier was in every engagement of the Army of the Potomac while in that army, including the memorable battles of Fredericsburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. As one incident of his experience, on the second day of July, 1863, at Gettysburg, he in charge of a volunteer skirmishing squad of four men, in the woods between and in front of Little and Big Round Top, captured ninety-six prisoners of war. He took with his own hands three swords and one revolver from the Fifth Texas Confederate Infantry. These ninety-six prisoners were captured at a time when the official records show only two hundred and ninety-one prisoners of war were captured by the entire army. This was abrave achievement, in which fear stood still and courage was the master spirit. at night, amid the groans of the wounded and dying, in command of the detail to bury the dead, more tha forty tried friends were buried in one common grave. Rebel musketry fired their salute, and the stars of heaven lighted them to their eternal home.
The department of the GUlf and the west coast of Florida became the field of his operations. He commanded several posts established to assist the navy and to help the refugees and Crackers to escape from the rebel lines. He captured three blokade runners, and was in several small engagements. In one, at St. Mark's Lighthouse, he captured a twelve pound brass cannon. During all his Florida service the rebel army boasted of having orders to take no colored soldiers or white officers who commanded in a colored regiment alive as prisoners of war, but to kill them at sight, without quarter.
While in the army, our hero divided his time equally between his military duties, the study of every published work on military science and reading Blackstone and Kent. Leaving the army, he attended for a term medical lectures at the Bellevue Medical Hospital College, in New York city. He then entered the Albany Law School, and was admitted to the bar at Albany, in April, 1866. Still further pursuing his law studies, he graduated at the Michigan University Law School, in 1867. Having practiced law in Syracuse, New York, for a time, he located in Chicago in June, 1867. His merits as a man and lawyer soon attracted attention, and his success was early assured. While on the threshold of success, misfortune's wave swept over him, as it did thousands of others, in the fire of October 8th, 1871. His papers, library and business became a smouldering ruin. But amidst the general desolation, while the hot smoke was yet rolling over our stricken city, he was among the first to rally in business. October eleventh found him counseling with his clients at Dr. F.M. Wilder's office of Twenty-second street. All he had left was an abiding and unbounded faith in the rebuilding and future prosperity of Chicago. Then came the struggle for dear life. Unprepared for the emergency, a brief in type of an important case in the Supreme Court* having been burned, he obtained a pass to Ottawa, and was the first lawyer from Chicago to tell the Court of the fearful dangers past, and for want of money slept in a chair in the office of the Clifton House. He won his case, and soon obtained a footing out of the "Slough of Despond."
In April, 1875, Mr. Willett was appointed Village Attorney of Hyde Park, Cook county, Illinois, and re-appointed in 1876 and also in 1877. He published the ordinances of Hyde Park, an original work of four hundred pages. In January, 1879, he was appointed to the respoisible position of County Attorney for Cook county, and he has been twice re-appointed - in 1880 and 1881 - which place he now holds. He has discharged the arduous and often perplexing duties of this position with great success, and has earned the gratitude of the people by his efficiency and fidelity in the defense of their rights. In an official capacity he has always met the expectations of the most exacting, and discharged the most delicate and difficult duties with such signal ability and tact, as not only to best conserve the public interests, but to satisfy even the captious. Always deliberate in reaching conclusions, the pressure which so often is exerted to influence the judgment of public officers, never disturbs the logical reasonings through which he arrived at results, and never moves him from a rigid exactness in the administration of any public trust which has been placed in his keeping. It is seldom that a man so exactly fitted for the excitements surrounding public position, and of such an even temperament under all the varying circumstances of official life, is met with; and it is not surprising that Mr. Willett should have attracted to himself the attention of many of those who have seen in his public and private life the elements of extreme usefulness on the bench.
Mr. Willet's legal business has been varied, embracing the entire circuit of criminal and civic jurisprudence. He now confines himself to civil practice, paying particular attention to constitutional, corporation, equity and real estate questions. He stands in front rank of his profession, being a skillful and fearless leader. He is prominent in political, social and fraternal organizations. Frank and outspoken to bluntness,he is an exposer of fraud and duplicity in every form. "Modest, firm, simple and self poised, his fame shall be earned not alone by things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done." Like the tree just commencing to bear fruit, the years of his future shall be rich in his nobler and greater achievements.
*White vs. Herman 51 Illinois, 243.
Note: The quietness and usefulness of his official sagacity are well ilustrated in the case of People ex rel. Shaack vs. Brayton, 94 Illinois, 341. The statutes provided a way to consolidate the towns of South, West and North Chicago, and the public and press demanded it. Under a statute the county authorities at the request of the city authorities, created the new town of Chicago. The legality of these proceedings was doubed, but the question was how to make a case till after the election of officers for the new town. After such election, if illegal, all assessments and taxes in two of the old towns would be absolutely void, because the assessor of the new town would be merely a de facto officer in the old town where he resided. All the legal talent in Chicago failed to find any way of averting the catastrophe; yet, like all great undertakings, a way as simple as the discovery of America by Columbus was found by County Attorney Willett. Its simplicity. however, cannot detract from the ingenuity which conceived such practical results. He had Frank Shaack, a citizen of West Chicago, go before a Justice of the Peace, H.B. Brayton, in South Chicago, to acknowledge a chattel mortgage, and the justice refused to take the acknowledgment on the grounds that the towns had not been consolidated and the instrument must be acknowldged in the town where the mortgagor resided. A petition for a mandamus was then filed in the Supreme Court, to compel the justice to acknowledge the chattel mortgage and the court deciding the case promptly before the election, held the towns were not consolidated. The assessment at this time, 1880, was for South Chicago, $41,678,440; West Chicago, $34,883,888; and North Chicago, $12,494,009; and the taxes were, South Chicago, $2,063,326; West Chicago, $1,729,663, and North Chicago, $675,728. And these figures alone represent the importance of this case.
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