Willis R. Wylie was born at Westport in Essex County, New York the son of Eli and Huldah (Clapp) Wylie.

The year the Civil War broke out the family moved to Port Andrew, Wisconsin and then to Plainview, Minnesota, near Rochester. In 1879 the family moved to Worthington, Barnes County, leaving Plainview in May and arriving in Worthington in June, a trip that took five weeks by covered wagon.

Eli homesteaded north of Valley City and the boys combined their horses to break sod for the various neighbors in Getchell Prairie, breaking some 90 acres the first year. In between breaking jobs Willis played baseball with the local Valley City team. As time progressed, this became sort of a vocation, traveling from town to town, hiring out as needed on the hometown baseball team or following the horse races.

As in all new communities, there were many exchanges of property and moving of buildings. By 1910 Willis and his brothers had gotten together the necessary equipment for moving buildings and were actively engaged not only in moving buildings but grading roads, removing trees, etc.

In 1910 Willis and his family moved to Malle Creek, Sask., Canada to try their hands at farming. Dry years precluded their making a success of this venture, so they moved to Chinook, Montana with no better results. Finally, in 1919 the family returned to Valley City, where Willis carried on his moving business for many, years. Always a fighter, Willis Wylie, at age 89, engaged in a fist fight in which he landed one blow that finished the fight., He was arrested and paid a fine of $8.50. Men were men in those days.

Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 278