Here is some information from Willard's death
certificate, as passed on to me by cousin Penny Cole. (Penny is the granddaughter of Frank Jacob Britain's brother, Lawson.)
White male, widower (widower of Katherine Britain),
date of birth Aug 4, 1850, birthplace Glenwood, Iowa.
Occupation - Farmer (Retired). Father: William
Britain, place of birth England. Mother: Mary Baines,
place of birth England. Date of death: June 16, 1920
in Salt Creek, Reno County, Kansas. Buried in Alden,
Rice County, Kansas. "Cause of Death" is listed as
Heart Failure and contributory factors is Asthma. John
Britain is the one who filled out the information.

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Notes: John Britain was one of Willard's sons. A few things in this contradict information that I have. The first is the marital status as "widower." We have pictures in the family album of Ida Kinney, who is described as "stepmother" (of Frank and his brothers). She could have pre-decesased Willard (I have no idea when or where she was born or died) but if she did, he should properly be described as the widower of Ida Britain. I suspect, however, that he is described this way because it was one of his sons giving the information, and the sons really hated their stepmother. (I'm given to understand they weren't necessarily all that fond of the old man, either!) Likely John just didn't want to think about Ida, let alone mention her, whether living or dead.

I should also mention that Katherine was apparently Willard's second wife. Mills County, Iowa information records a marriage for "W. P. Briton" to an Alice R. Campbell in 1877. The Mormon familysearch site further records a child of this marriage, Mary. I have found no trace of either Alice or Mary through on-line resources; my assumption is that they both died sometime before Willard moved on to Nebraska. I am also uncertain of the date of that migration; a closer examination of Census records in the appropriate locales will shed light on that subject, as well as possibly on the subject of what became of the first wife and child.

There is also a discrepancy of birth dates. The information given above says 1850. His tombstone says 1856. Extrapolating from the 1860 Census, which gave his age as 2, would give a birth year of 1858 or 1857.

I think the 1850 date is way too early--there is also another child on that 1860 Census that was 10 years, and so would likely have been born in 1850 (or 1849). A definite date may be impossible to pin down.

There is a discrepancy with the death dates, also. The information above says 1920; the tombstone says 1921. In this case I am inclined to believe the death certificate information; it was presumably filled out at the time of his death and being "close" to the event should be most accurate. It would, however, be interesting to know when and by whom the stone was placed.

More information about Willard Benjamin Britain and his family can be found at:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamills/

There is a search engine for the site; remember to try all possible variant spellings on "Britain:" Brittain, Britton, Briton, etc. This information concerns a time when the spellings of names were not at all standardized.