Willet Post

One of the very first things I began to work on when I initially started researching as historian for Plymouth Spiritualist Church was to verify a connection between the Post Family and the Plymouth Congregation.

There was an oral history that the congregation could trace itself back to the initial “Rochester Circle” that was composed of such members as Isaac and Amy Post, Leah Fox, and other prominent early Spiritualists but nothing was plainly documented that anyone knew about.

So I went through the archives that had been copied and put into a digital format, and read through pretty much all the early documents I had available to me.

The name Willet Post occurred several times in the early paperwork and based on the date, I assumed that he might have been a relative of Amy and Isaac. It turns out that Willet Post was actually the third son of Amy and Isaac Post.

The online River Campus Libraries collection titled “Isaac and Amy Post family papers” has provided pretty much all the biographical information I could find about Willet Post:

According to the River Campus collection, Willet E. Post was born on March 14, 1847 in Rochester New, York. The 1915 New York state census, however, states he was born in 1848.

The section that mentions Willet states that he “followed a career in his father's drug firm, became very interested in Spiritualism as a young man. He was an active worker in the earliest days of the Spiritualist Church of Rochester, serving it as a trustee, and also filling various offices in the lyceum. Except for four years of work on his own in the grocery business, Isaac and Amy's third son remained in the drug business until his retirement around 1912.”

Willet is listed as one of the original trustees in the formation of Plymouth as a congregation under Rev. Austin; he also signed the 1917 General Assembly charter under Rev. Herrick.

According to the 1915 state census at age 67 he was married to Josephine W. Post, his son was Ruden Post, married to Nellie Post, with three grandchildren: Douglas, Kirby, and Annie.