Eli Willis Wells, V.S., of No. 158 Kent street, Grand Rapids, Mich., was born in Norfolk county, province of Ontario, Canada, November 17, 1852, a son of William and Mary (Walker) Wells, of whom further mention will be made.

Dr. E.W. Wells was educated in the high school of Victoria and in Simcoe, was reared on a farm and followed agriculture as a vocation until he entered Ontario Veterinary college in 1879, in which he completed his studies in 1881. He practiced for a short time at Port Rowan, Ontario, then for four years at Lowell, Mich., and in 1885 settled in Grand Rapids, where he has been actively and remuneratively employed ever since, with the exception of a few months that he passed in Chicago, Ill.

The parents of Dr. Wells were both natives of Canada, the father being of Welsh extraction, but the mother’s family emigrated from North Carolina in the early part of the present century, when the country was quite new and the journey made in wagons and on horseback. The Walker family was of Irish and Scotch origin, but both the Wells family and the Walker family are now recognized as long established and prominent among the residents of Norfolk county, Ontario. To William and Mary Wells were born two sons and one daughter, of whom Eli W., is the eldest; Martha, the daughter, died at the age of twelve years, and Edgar is a farmer in Canada. The father died in 1865, at the age of sixty-five, and the mother died July, 1899, on the old Canadian homestead, at the age of eighty-nine years. Both parents, however, had been previously wedded, and each had a family of four children by the first marriage, but all harmonized and formed one happy family. Seven of these half-brothers and sisters of the doctor are still living, are all married and variously located, though the most of them live near the old Canadian home.

Dr. Wells was himself united in marriage, in his native country, in 1875, to Miss Lizzie Thorne, who was born in Dunstable, England in 1851, and four children have crowned this union, viz: Daniel Adelbert, Archie Walter, George Arthur, and Lottie May. The elder two of these children are machinery salesman and the youngest two are still at home.

In politics, Dr. Wells is a republican, but is not offensively partisan, as he is able to see faults in the republican party and virtues in the democratic.

The Wells family stand high socially, the sons being honorable and upright young men, and respected by every one. They are free from many of the voice of "Young America," neither drink nor smoke, and are of unusually moral habit.