Holy Crap! I remember that collection but it's been about 30+ years since I saw part of it.
My grandfather was a collector in Ft Wayne Indiana and he was good friends with Bill. (I went to high school with one of his grandsons.) They both worked at the Harvester plant and were part of the same local archaeological society.
You should do some research on the items. I'm pretty sure Bill and another local collector bought part of the Augustus C. Gruhlke collection from Waterloo Indiana. That would have been around 1945 or so. He also got some pieces from the collection of Leslie Hills of Ft Wayne, and probably Albert Addis of Albion Indiana. Gruhlke was friends with Warren Moorehead, which is why Northeast Indiana is well represented in his books. I'd bet some of the nicer hardstone items are pictured there.
He sold a couple of birdstones (the Gruhlke Bird pictured as a line drawing in Moorehead) to Parks, but there were still several nice ones left in the 1980's. Not sure how active he was after then.
