While she was still a child, the family removed to Tioga County, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Bliss bought a tract of wild land and built a modest home in a forest of hemlock and maple trees.

"[2] Very soon, a friend and co-worker of Philip, Major Daniel Webster Whittle, called the Willsons to aid him in evangelistic work in Chicago.

In 1878, Francis Murphy, the temperance evangelist, invited Mr. and Mrs. Willson to "sing the gospel" for him in what was known as the "Red Ribbon Crusade."

They visited the principal cities of the Northern and Southern states, and everywhere, Mrs. Willson won the admiration and respect of all who heard her.

[2][3] Thurlow Weed, in an article in the New-York Tribune named her the "Jenny Lind of sacred melody," a term that clung to her thereafter.

In 1882, she and her husband spent several months in Great Britain, in the gospel temperance work, under the leadership of Francis Murphy.