Polk County MINNESOTA Biographies.....Watts, William June 9 1850 - 
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File contributed for Minnesota Biographies Project by:
Carol Eddleman deddle@ix.netcom.com November 2, 2004, 2:16 pm

Author: Anonymous
Hon. William Watts.  The subject of this sketch has been judge of the District 
Court for the last seventeen years, having been elected to that postition in 
1898 and twice since that time without opposition.  He ranks among the ablest 
of the district judges in Minnesota.  Before becoming judge he was county 
attorney of Polk county, city attorney of Crookston, a member of its city 
council twelve years, member of the school board and referee in bankruptcy.  He 
was born June 9, 1850, in Stanley, Huron county, Ontario.  His father was 
Matthew Watts, a native of Yorkshire, England, who came to Canada in 1842 and 
his mother, Hannah (Simpson) Watts of Cumberlandshire, England, who came in 
1832 at the age of six years.  They settled in the backwoods near the shore of 
Lake Huron in 1848, enduring the hardships of pioneers who make farms from 
heavily timbered lands with their own hands, and there they are buried, the 
father dying in 1854 at the age of thirty-four years and his wife in 1912 at 
the age of eighty-six.

Judge Watts received his education in the common schools and worked at farming, 
lumbering and teaching school in Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota 
until 1875 when he entered the law department of the University of Michigan, 
graduating therefrom in 1877 with the degree of bachelor of laws, and was 
admitted to the bar of Michigan.  He came to Crookston in January, 1878, and 
has lived there continuously since that time, making him the first lawyer now 
living to locate in what is now the Fourteenth Judicial District of Minnesota.  
He soon became a good trial lawyer and had a fair share of the law business of 
the region tributary to Crookston while at the bar and has also done 
considerable farming in the Red River valley.

Judge Watts was united in marriage with Edith E. Webb whose father, Rice Webb 
was one of the pioneers of Polk county and who is a descendant of John Alden 
and Priscilla, immortalized in the verse of Longfellow.  They have four 
children, William A., lawyer, residing at Duluth, and Mary Ella, Anna M. and 
Matthew S., at home.

Additional Comments:
Source: Compendium of History and Biography of Polk County, Minnesota.  
Minneapolis: W. H. Bingham & Co., 1916, p. 141.

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