(Published in History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains Vol. 3 by James H. Hawley 1920)


Willis Webb owns and cultivates a ranch of twenty-one acres adjoining the corporation limits of Emmett on the west. He came to Idaho from southern Utah in 1901 but is a native of the state of New York, his birth having there occurred September 29, 1844. His parents were Charles and Laura (Smith) Webb, with whom he crossed the plains to Utah in a big covered wagon drawn by a yoke of cows and a yoke of oxen. This was in 1849, when he was but four years of age. His parents were converts to the Mormon teachings. The father, Charles Webb, later became a member of the Mormon Battalion that went to California and assisted the United States government, being nine months on the trip. The own mother of Willis Webb had died in New York when he was but two years of age and it was his stepmother with whom he came to Utah when the family crossed the plains in 1849.

Willis Webb was reared in the southern part of Utah upon a ranch and in young manhood he did active military duty in the Black Hawk war. He was married at the age of twenty-four years, on the 3d of October, 1868, to Miss Beulah Allen, who was born in Kentucky but was reared in Andrew county, Missouri. She passed away at the family home west of Emmett. September 18, 1916, when seventy-five years of age. Mr. Webb has one son and two daughters. Mrs. Beulah Harris, who is now the wife of John Harris, resides in a nice home of her own near the home of her father, it being situated on the original thirty-seven acre tract of land which her father cultivated. Willis, who was born July 26, 1873, was married February 19, 1899, to Clara Black, whose birth occurred at Glendale, Utah, February 19, 1880, and who is a daughter of William and Louisa (Washburn) Black. To Mr. and Mrs. Willis Webb, Jr., have been born eight living children: Clarinda, who was born February 22, 1900; Beulah, whose birth occurred November 16, 1902: Lula, whose natal day was August 3, 1904; Vera, born July 15, 1906; Willis Andrew, born October 6, 1909; Mildred, born December 29, 1912; Lloyd, born November 15, 1916; and Edward, who was born on the 8th of June, 1918. The third child of the family is Nancy, the wife of Martin H. Smith, residing in the Bramwell neighborhood of Gem county and mentioned elsewhere in this work.

In young manhood Mr. Webb of this review was a ward teacher of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for many years and was formerly an elder in the church