William and his older brother, Harvey, both left their Indiana home in 1876. Harvey travelled to Europe to continue his studies in Paris. The sixteen-year-old William headed west to the Washington Territory and took up farming in Whitman County, an area in the Palouse that had been off limits to settlers since the Indian Wars of the 1850s. Too young to qualify for land under the Homestead Act, he returned to Indiana where he took some business courses at Central Indiana Normal College (later Canterbury College (Indiana).