116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Whittling away
William Wilker had inventive mind, talented hands
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William Wilker was born in Canada, but he would become known for his inventions – and his whittling – in Iowa.
While still in Canada, Wilker married Minnie Fawthrop in 1890.
Wilker was an experienced plumber and tinner. He placed an ad in a New York trade magazine offering his skills. While he was at a concert in 1892, a telegram arrived offering him a position with Tourtellot’s hardware store in Wyoming, a hamlet in Jones County, Iowa.
The Wilkers moved to Iowa, and William became a U.S. citizen in 1901.
In 1906, Wilker opened a hardware store on South Main Street. He became active in his community, serving on the Wyoming town council, the board of education, the Methodist church board, and the cemetery association. Minnie was a member of the Hawthorne Club (a study club), Order of Eastern Star, and was also active in the church.
The couple had four children:
- Dr. Marguerite (Mrs. Edward) Johnson, who earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and became a lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
- Dr. Will Wilker, who became a resident surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, specializing in children’s diseases.
- June Minnie, who married Capt. Gardner Williams of San Diego, and is buried in the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
- Aneta, who died in 1907, at age 13.
Furnace inventor
While running his hardware store, Wilker invented a furnace. He installed the first one in Wyoming and made about 150 more but couldn’t finance a foundry to mass produce them. He also installed Wyoming’s first bathtub. It was copper lined in a wood frame.
In 1939, Wilker sold the stock and fixtures of his store to J.W. Lyons and John Roach of West Union and he retired.
The Wilkers were wintering in California when they celebrated their golden anniversary in 1940.
Minnie suffered a heart attack in August 1945 and spent three weeks in Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids. When she recovered enough to leave the hospital, the couple moved to the Commonwealth Apartments in Cedar Rapids.
After Minnie died in October, Wilker moved back to Wyoming, Iowa.
Whittling away
At loose ends, he picked up a jackknife and a piece of wood and began whittling until all he had left was a pile of shavings.
“As I swept up those shavings I thought, ‘This is pretty silly, just whittling away a stick and having nothing to show for it. I’d better make something if I’m going to spend whittling time’,” he told The Gazette in 1955.
His next project was whittling a solid chain out of a single stick of wood.
Soon Wilker had a tiny shop at the back of his home where wooden chains made of oak, walnut, jack pine, and birdseye maple were finished in their natural color and waxed. Some were small enough to be made into necklaces. Some were incorporated into Wilker’s next projects: lamps that ranged in size from 6 inches to 5-foot floor lamps.
It also led to the invention of tools to make the lamps. Wilker made special shapers, hammers, and patterns for his lamp-making.
Wilker usually didn’t sell his lamps. The ones he didn’t keep for his own home found homes with friends and relatives.
His daughter, Marguerite, had many of them on her yacht out of Port Arthur in Ontario, Canada, and in her summer home there.
William accepted payment for a few lamps that were custom made, but he gave away most of his creations.
About his hobby, Wilker said, “It’s interesting and it keeps a fellow from worrying or even thinking about himself.”
Childhood illness
Wilker gave up chain whittling in the early 1960s when his arm started to bother him, but he continued working on his brass, copper and tin lamps.
In 1964, at age 95, Wilker recalled for a Gazette interviewer his sickly childhood.
“I certainly baffled the doctors,” he said. “They called it consumption way back in those days. Lack of a better name, I guess. I had to quit school when I was 12 because of ill health. The doctors didn’t expect me to live very long.
“Well, they’ve long since passed on and here I am feeling better every year.”
When his health began to fail, Wilker moved to Ontario to live with Marguerite. He was 101 years old in 1970 when he died in a hospital in Toronto, Canada.
His body was shipped back to Wyoming, Iowa, where services were held in the Methodist church, and he was buried beside Minnie in the Wyoming cemetery.
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