Background
Albert S. Willis, Sr. was born on January 22, 1843, in Shelbyville, Kentucky, the son of Dr. Shelby Willis and Harriet Button. At the age of seven he removed to Louisville with his widowed mother.
Albert S. Willis, Sr. was born on January 22, 1843, in Shelbyville, Kentucky, the son of Dr. Shelby Willis and Harriet Button. At the age of seven he removed to Louisville with his widowed mother.
He attended the common schools and graduated from the Male High School in 1860, then taught for two years, studied law, and graduated from Louisville Law School at the age of twenty, too young to be admitted to the bar. After another year of teaching he entered law practice in partnership with his stepfather, J. L. Clemmons, a prominent lawyer of Louisville.
In 1872 he was presidential elector (Democratic) from the Louisville district and in 1874 was elected county attorney of Jefferson County, which office he held until 1877.
In 1876 he was elected to Congress. He served five terms in the House of Representatives (1877 - 1887), making an excellent though not a distinguished record. During the last two terms he was chairman of the committee on rivers and harbors.
After retiring from Congress, Willis, Sr. engaged in the practice of law until September 1893, when President Cleveland appointed him envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Hawaii. It was a strange and difficult mission to which he was called. In the islands a Provisional Government was in power, following the revolution of January 1893. President Cleveland, on coming into office in March of that year, had withdrawn from the Senate the annexation treaty negotiated by the Harrison administration and had sent J. H. Blount to Hawaii to make an investigation. On the basis of Blount's report, Cleveland adopted the policy of attempting to restore in the islands the status existing before the outbreak of the revolution. Willis, Sr. was the instrument selected to put this policy into effect. Though he was accredited in the usual diplomatic form to the Provisional Government, it was his business to induce that government to terminate its own existence and submit to the authority of the deposed Queen, from whom a pledge was to be required that she would grant full amnesty to the revolutionists.
Willis, Sr. arrived in Honolulu on November 4, 1893; it was nearly three weeks later before the Hawaiian government received, not from him but through reports from Washington, the first definite indication of the nature of Cleveland's policy. Willis, Sr. meantime suppressed whatever doubts he may have had as to the wisdom of the policy - there is reason to believe he had some doubts - and went cautiously about his business. With some difficulty the Queen was induced to agree to grant a complete amnesty if President Cleveland succeeded in getting her back on the throne, but the Provisional Government, through its foreign minister, Sanford B. Dole, emphatically declined to acquiesce when the restoration plan was presented to it by Willis, Sr. , and the whole project fell to the ground. The Cleveland policy and its carrying out was a quixotic enterprise and its only important practical result in Hawaii was further to embitter the situation. Willis, Sr. performed his disagreeable task with perhaps as much tact and consideration as was possible under the circumstances.
He continued in office as minister three years longer, until his death, and despite a number of irritating incidents won the respect and friendly regard of all elements in the community. Albert S. Willis, Sr. died on January 6, 1897, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Albert Shelby Willis, Sr. was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Kentucky's 5th district.
On November 20, 1878, Albert Shelby Willis, Sr. married Florence Dulaney, by whom he had a son.
