From the Brainerd Daily Dispatch:

Last Rites For J. W. Hilliard Will Be Friday

Funeral arrangements for J. W. Hilliard of Brainerd, who died at his home at 329, Fourth Ave. Tuesday evening, have been completed and will be held at the Whitney Mortuary Chapel Friday at 2 p.m. Interment will be at Evergreen. Friends may call at the mortuary Thursday evening from 7 to 10 and Friday morning until the time of the funeral at 2 p.m.

John Wesley Hilliard was born July 25, 1859, near Holman, LaCrosse county, Wis. He was the youngest son in the family of six boys and three girls of Joseph Warren and Lorinda (Griswald) Hilliard. His father was a blacksmith and farmer in the Holman area and it was in LaCrosse that Mr. Hilliard received his early schooling. He learned the flour milling trade and worked at it in mills at Hawley, New York Mills, Northfield, Jasper, and later became mechanical superintendent for the New Prague Milling Company and its other mills at Blue Earth and Wells, Minn.

Mr. Hilliard established the first electrical light service in Northfield about 1889, which he developed into one of the most efficient plants in Minnesota. This later became a Stock Company and eventually was taken over by Northern States.

It was while with the New Prague Milling Co., that his health failed and the doctors advised him to change to the pine woods of northern Minnesota or the west.

In 1907, Mr. Hilliard moved to northern Minnesota and became interested in the logging and lumber business in Big Falls and Little Fork areas. The family lived for a time near Happyland but in 1915 had purchased a farm north of Brainerd where Mr. and Mrs. Hilliard lived for the most part of the past 33 years. Last fall they moved into northeast Brainerd where Mr. Hilliard passed away, after a brief illness, Tuesday at 9:40 p.m.

Mr. Hilliard married Lillie May Huestis at Northfield in 1888 and to this union were born four boys and one girl, all of whom survive. The children are Milton of Winona, Howard of Minneapolis, Francis of Sumner, Wash., Harold of Halcomb, Ill., and Mrs. R. D. Wuertz (Florence) of Springfield, Ohio. Also surviving the deceased is a sister, Mrs. Anna H. Gill of Butte, Mont.