Willard was the second cousin of Frances Willard, founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and prominent suffragist. Cyrus Willard claimed to have played a significant role in the shaping of his cousin's political views, recalling in his autobiography, "I had a pile of correspondence with her four inches tall and converted her to the proposition that poverty caused as much intemperance as intemperance caused poverty."Willard, Autobiography, chapter 15, pp. 1-2, cited in LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, pg. 131.
