Oscar H. Will was a pioneer entrepreneur and farmer who founded the Oscar Will Seed company. He is partly the namesake of today’s Will-Moore Elementary, which replaced two previous schools, one of which called the Will School (operated from 1905-1951).
Will was born in 1855 on a farm near Pompie Hill, New York. He began working for his brother’s nursery when he was 15 years old. Will relocated to Bismarck in 1881, where he worked at Fuller’s Greenhouse for a year before purchasing it and renamed it Oscar H. Will & Company.
Will experimented with new seed varieties, especially those of corn and beans. Beginning in about 1884, Will sold his unique seed varieties by catalog under the name Oscar H. Will’s Pioneer Brand Seed Company.
In 1910, Will donated one hundred trees to be planted in the city’s first municipal park, Custer Park. Many of those trees remain to this day.
Oscar Will died in 1917, but his son George continued operating the company. George Will maintained a nursery on the land now holding Kirkwood Mall, which also was horse pasture for the Wachter family.
While the company no longer exists, the seed varieties created by Will are still offered by other companies.
