CUYLER WILLIAMS

Portrait Sketch of Cuyler Williams.  Drawn by Alfred Groat.  Presented to the Hillsdale Public Library by H. D. Harvey

Cuyler Williams and his sister Hannah

From The Hillsdale Harbinger - Friday, March 13, 1908

After an illness of some months, but which had confined him to his bed for only a few days, Cuyler Williams died at his home north of the village on Friday morning last. (March 6, 1908)  Born on Collins street in a house not now standing, in November 1832, he had but very seldom been outside the confines of his town.  Living a life of isolation devoted in youth to the care of a blind father, and in his last years to that of an aged sister, he had not the opportunity to develop the marked talent for art which from earliest boyhood he had shown.

His first pictures were painted under circumstances which should have deterred mort people from attempting it.  The neatly put up tube paints where then unknown and only a few dry colors used by house and wagon painters were to be had here; his canvas and even brushes he was obliged to manufacture himself.  Under these trying circumstance and with only the assistance of a few lessons from John Bristol, he worked his way up and to-day his pictures are to be seen in nearly every home about here and many have been purchased by parties living in various parts of the county.

Next to his love for art was that for flowers; he knew every wild flower and many of the choicest treasurer of his flower garden had been brought from the woods and fields and domesticated by him and it was with them that he spent much of his time.  He was a lover of nature and never considered his art above it; if he was painting a flower and one of the leaves was torn, his copy was literal, even to the torn leaf, and much of the charm of his pictures was due to their truth in nature.

With him to make an acquaintance was to make a lasting friend and many people, only occasional visitors in Hillsdale, were callers at his home at every opportunity.

He leaves an aged sister, Hannah, who is in her 93rd year.  It had been his first thought to make her declining years as happy as it was possible for him to do, and his loss is to her a great affliction in her old age.  A cousin, Phil Curtis, and a niece, Mrs. Samuel Downing, of Ghent, with her husband, had been at the home for several days.

The funeral was held Monday afternoon from the house, Rev. B. Seeholzer officiating.  The remains were placed in the receiving vault at the rural cemetery.