WI BIO - Lafayette Co - RISLEY, William L.

History of La Fayette County, Wisconsin. Chicago: Western Historical, 1881, 
p 788

William L. RISLEY, carpenter and joiner, [village of] Blanchardville, in the 
Town of Blanchard, Lafayette County, Wisconsin], P. O. Blanchardville, was 
born 03 November 1840 in Oakland County, Michigan. He left there, with his 
parents, in 1843, and went to Rock County, [Territory of] Wisconsin, and 
engaged in farming, and remained there until they went to Janesville [Rock 
County, Wisconsin] in 1852. [Wisconsin became a State 29 May 1848.] He then 
went to Boone County, Illinois, and worked with his father at the [carpenter] 
trade, then clerked in a grocery store for J. BIGLOW, then to Rockford 
[Winnebago County], Illinois, then to Iowa, and then to Blanchardville 
[Lafayette County, Wisconsin]. In 1864 Mr. RISLEY went to California, and 
remained there until 1865, and was in the Cherokee Nation in 1869 and 1870.

On 10 September 1860 he [William L. RISLEY] married Jane CLINE [a maiden 
name?], who was born 09 October 1840 in Coles County, Illinois, who came to 
Wisconsin at the age of seven years, and settled in Iowa County. They 
[William L. and Jane RISLEY] have five children: (1) Ella, born in 1861, 
who died in 1862; (2) Emma, born in 1864; (3) Frank, born in 1867; (4) 
Bertha, born in 1870; and (5) Clara, born in 1874. In politics Mr. RISLEY 
is a Democrat, and in religion, a Lutheran. He has been Town Treasurer three 
years [1869, 1870, and 1871], and is Clerk at the present time. He is a 
member of the Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, and became a Mason in 1870, in 
Worden Lodge. He owns town property.

[William RISLEY was also one of three members of the school board which 
supervised the one teacher who taught the first school organized in 
Blanchardville in 1858 (p 643). The only other RISLEY mentioned in this text 
is Dudley RISLEY, one of the first settlers of the Town of Blanchard, which 
in 1881 was made up of eighteen sections of Township 4 North, Range 5 East. 
Dudley RISLEY came to the town of Blanchard about 1853, and was elected one 
of two Inspectors for the Town of Blanchard at a meeting of the electors held 
in the Village of Blanchardville on 06 April 1869.] 

Submitted by Cathy Kubly