Contributed by, Don Rivara
Patrick Willis
and Elizabeth Ann “Betsy Ann” Pittman
were the parents of Lucy Ann “Louisiana” Willis [1846-1926]. We
know this from Patrick’s will executed in Mercer County, Missouri, after his death in 1889. We also know this from Louisiana’s death certificate in Spokane County, WA, in 1926. We
also know it from the testimony of Patick’s grandchildren, who were alive when
the author could interview them.
Patrick Willis was born in Hanover County, Virginia, on 15 May 1822. This
information comes from a Bible sheet in the possession of his grandson Cecil
Dell [1888-1975] in the early 1970’s. Patrick’s
parents were William “Buck” Willis [1795-1878]
and Elizabeth Kersey [abt..1800-abt.
1841]. L.D.S. records show that Elizabeth
Kersey married William Willis on
30 April 1816 in Louisa County, Virginia, a county
adjacent to Hanover.
Tax records of Hanover County do not show any established
Willis family in the 1820’s; so it is believed that the family lived there but
a short time. In the county records
there are a couple of references to a “J.
J. Willis.” In Hanover County, Virginia Chancery Wills and Notes, there is a
listing of a John Williams and a John J.
Willis who were administrators of securities in a legal matter. It is believed that this person’s name was John
Joel Willis. In the 1810 U.S. Census of nearby King
and Queen
County,
Virginia, adjacent to Hanover County, there are listings for a Joel Willis and a John Willis; the two family groups have exactly the same
makeup. It is believed that this family
was enumerated twice during that census, perhaps due to a move. The makeup of both families was this: 1 male
10-16 years of age; one male over 45 years of age; one female age 0-10; one
female age 10-16; two females age 16-26; and one female age 26-45. It is also believed that in official matters,
Mr. Willis used John J. or simply John Willis, but was commonly known as Joel
Willis. It is also believed that this is the same
Joel Willis who appears in the censuses of Claiborne County, Tennessee, in 1830. It is believed that Joel Willis [born between 1760 and 1764] was the grandfather of Patrick Willis.
It
is doubtful that Patrick remembered living in Virginia because he left there at a very
young age. The family moved to Claiborne County, Tennessee, in the middle 1820’s. The family of
William Willis is shown there in the
1830 U.S. Census. That census shows one male
age 30-40 [William]; one male age 10-15 [James]; one male age 5-9 [Patrick];
one male under 5; one female age 30-40 [Elizabeth
Kersey Willis]; one female age 10-15; and one female age 5-9. It was in Claiborne County that Patrick spent his
youth.
His
mother, Elizabeth Kersey Willis, was
still alive in the 1840 U.S. Census of Claiborne County, aged 40-49, but had
died by 21 January 1842, when William married his second wife, Elzira “Elziry” Norton [aka. King]. Elzira
was seventeen; Buck, forty-six.
Patrick’s new stepmother was about three years younger than he. With his
new wife, Buck
started a second
family that grew
rapidly
.
On 14 December 1845, in Claiborne County, Patrick married Elizabeth Ann [“Betsy Ann”] Pitman/Pittman. He was twenty-three, she eighteen. Betsy was born 26 November 1827 in Claiborne County, the daughter of James Pittman and Silvia Hurst. Betsy Ann’s Hurst grandparents were prominent landholders in
Claiborne. The family attended the Springdale Baptist Church. Thomas
Hurst, her grandfather, was a slave holder.
His many siblings and their families made up a large block of the
residents in Claiborne County. Today, a large percentage of Claiborne County is descended from the Hurst family.
With
his mother gone and his father engrossed in his new family, Patrick became
closely allied with his wife’s family, the Pittmans. Betsy Ann and her siblings were close, and the men the
Pittman sisters married were companionable too. In 1849 the daughters were
given part of the proceeds from the sale of some family land. Immediately Betsy Ann and Patrick Willis
and their two children prepared to leave Tennessee by wagon. They
were accompanied by Betsy’s sister’s family, Nancy and James True and
their children. Also accompanying the
group was Betsy’s seventeen-year-old brother, Salem Pittman. The group
emigrated together to Mahaska
County, Iowa. The siblings left behind their mother, Silvia Hurst Pittman, who was living
with her daughter Emeline Allen's
family. Betsy Ann's grandmother, Silvia
Breeding Hurst [abt.1767-1854], was also still alive at the time.
Patrick’s
brother, James Willis, was then
living in Illinois, but by the time of the 1850 Census was living in Wappelo County, Iowa, close to where Patrick was
living. On 18 August 1850, the
census-taker listed the Willis family in Mahaska County: #167 Patrick
Willis, age 28, born VA; Elizabeth
Willis, age 21 [should be 22], born TN; Lucy A. Willis, age 3, born TN; and James M. Willis, age 2, born IA, and the baby Margaret V. Willis, age 6 months.
James Monroe Willis, who was always called by his
middle name, was to be the Willises’ only son.
By birth, injury, or illness, Monroe had a crippled leg.
About 1852 the clan moved on
to Mercer County, Missouri, within a couple of miles from the Iowa border. The attraction there must have been Aunt Sarah "Sally" Hurst Harper [1789-1892]. She and her
thirteen children lived near Princeton. She was the eldest sister of Silvia Hurst Pittman. A John
Willis of Mercer County may have been an uncle of Patrick’s; if so, that
would have been another attraction to the area. The families seem to have
thrived here. Soon
two more of Betsy’s siblings, Olive
Estes and Mary Breeding, joined
the Willis-Hurst-Pitman clan in Mercer County in 1853. The families lived astraddle the
Missouri-Iowa state line and would spread on both sides of the border.
In the early 1850's
many people who had gone to California's gold fields were returning home, many with sacks of
nuggets and gold dust. The brothers-in-law Patrick
Willis, George Estes, James True, and Jackson Breeding, headed west. They were to be gone two years,
1853-1855, in which the women had to tend to their homes and families without
their men. The farms had to have been either leased out or allowed to lie fallow,
but the women would certainly have had to maintain large gardens for family
produce. It was during this period that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed,
that threw neighboring Kansas
into civil war.
When the brothers-in-law
agreed that it was time to return home from California, George Estes chose to remain in California, saying that he wanted to find a little more gold
before returning. Later a man appeared at the Estes farm and told Olive that he
and George had been returning from California when George became ill. The visitor said that he had
left George in a St.
Louis hospital.
[Apparently the story was that they had come by ship because St. Louis is east of Mercer County.] George never returned, and the family could find no
record of his ever having been a patient in a St. Louis hospital. The family theorized that the visitor had
murdered George for his gold, but why would the man visit the Estes home if he
had murdered George? My theory is that George did not want to return to Olive.
Her photo makes her look like a shrew. The hospital story was a ruse for him to
his wife, making her think he had died. No one knows for sure what happened to
George; Olive later married Alonzo Work.
The
brothers-in-law returned to a region now in political upheaval. Patrick began a
series of land purchases with the gold he brought back. On May 2, 1855, Mercer
County Deed Book C, page 535, shows that Patrick purchased from Daniel Barthlow
the west 1/2 of the northeast quarter of Section 32, Township 67, Range 25, 80
acres. On April 4, 1857, in Deed Book D, page 234, it shows that Patrick
purchased from Joseph Toney a four-acre parcel in the southeast corner of the
southeast quarter of Section 33, Township 67, Range 25. It was probably on this
land that the Willis School was built in 1859. On November 3, 1857, Patrick
purchased from his brother-in-law, Salem
Pittman, through a quitclaim deed, the northeast quarter of the southeast
quarter of Section 4, Township 66, Range 25, 40 acres, recorded in Deed Book E,
page 343. These parcels lay in the northwest corner of Mercer County between Saline, MO, and Pleasanton, Decatur
County, Iowa.
The Willis School was built approximately one and one-quarter miles
south of the town of Pleasanton, Decatur
County, Iowa,
in Mercer County, Missouri. The family lived very close to the Missouri-Iowa
state line. Some family members lived in Iowa
and some in Missouri, all close to one another. Among those who
contributed land, labor, and materials to build the school were Patrick Willis, Kirby McGrew [father of Monroe Willis' wife Melinda],
James Perkypile [He died enroute to OR with the Willises], and Adam Harper [one
of Aunt Sally's family]. It was not a subscription school; anyone could attend.
The building had two small windows on the east side and two small windows on
the west side. Under the windows, a writing board extended the entire length of
the building. The seats were made of split logs with wooden pins for legs. They
were placed so the students faced north. The door was in the south wall. The
first teacher was Alfred Brand, a new arrival from Indiana. All of Patrick and Elizabeth's children would have attended this school. The
school was sold in 1955 to a private party and the students were consolidated
into the county school system.
The
1850’s were turbulent times in the United States. Missouri was a slave state, but
nearby Iowa was not.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, Missouri exploded, its citizens
become involved in “Bloody Kansas,” in both the pro and anti-slavery
forces. Betsy’s brother Salem was so incensed at the
possibility of Kansas becoming a slave state that he fraudulently voted in the Kansas election although he was a
resident of Missouri. Men such as he were called “border jumpers.”
During
these hectic years, the Willises had four more daughters: Mary
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Willis, 1 May
1853; Amanda Arzina Willis, 20 May
1856; Melissa “Lissa” Willis, 2 May 1858; and Sarah Ann “Sade” Willis, 20 June 1860. Yet another daughter was born during the
Civil War: Emily Frances “Emma” Willis, 16 December 1863.
In January of 1860 word was
received that Silvia Hurst Pittman
had died from typhoid fever. She hadn't been an old woman, just fifty-four. It
hadn't been very many years since Silvia's own mother had died. 1860 was the
year of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency and the secession of South Carolina. Claiborne County, Tennessee, being in a border state, would have a tumultuous
four years with families split in their loyalties. Silvia was fortunate in that
she didn't have to live through those violent years.
The 1860 Census was taken in Lindley Township, Mercer County, Missouri. Household #1,089 was that of Patrick Willis, age 36, born VA. Other members of the household
were Elizabeth Willis, wife, age 33,
born TN; Louisiana Willis, daughter,
age 14, born TN; James M. Willis,
son, age 12, born TN; M.V. Willis,
daughter, age 10; born IA; Mary E.
Willis, age 7, born MO; Amanda
Willis, daughter, age 4, born MO; and Melissa
Willis, daughter, age 2, born MO. The census showed that the Willises owned $2,000
worth of real estate and $1,000 in personal property. The plight of the Willises during the
impending war would diminish their wealth.
Patrick’s brother James Willis and Betsy’s sisters’ families are nearby,
as was the large family of Harpers.
When the Civil War began, Salem
Pittman enlisted in the Union Army in Company M, 6th
Missouri L. M. Cavalry. Patrick and Betsy Ann had seven daughters and one lame son. The extreme violence in Missouri toward non-combatants by
both sides of the controversy led the Willises to emigrate to Oregon in the spring of 1864. Among those in their party were Betsy Ann’s
sisters Nancy True and Mary Breeding. Betsy
Ann's sister Olive Pittman Estes,
again married [to Alonzo Work], did
not chose to leave Missouri, but her son, Will
Estes, sixteen, unhappy with his stepfather and stepsiblings, chose to go
with his aunts and uncles. Olive refused permission for her next-oldest son, Jim Estes, fourteen, to go with his
aunts, but after the wagons left, Jim ran away and joined them at Council
Bluffs, Iowa, the jumping-off town for the Oregon-bound population of Iowa and
other points north. There were also some others in the wagon train, including a Bill Willis [supposedly no relation],
James Perkypile and his daughter, Juliette, married to storekeeper John Stanley, and Enoch Williams. Patrick
was elected captain. Will Estes would live out most of his life in Oregon,
but Jim Estes was to return to Missouri. He lived to be ninety-three and left his memoirs of
the journey across the plains. They appeared in the Leon,
Iowa Journal-Reporter on Thursday, April 27, 1933, and
again fifty years later on April 28, 1983.
James
N. Estes, who will soon celebrate his eighty-fourth birthday
anniversary, is the oldest resident of Pleasanton, the place
where he lived when only Indians roamed the prairie. He has witnessed the
moving of the first post office, watched the town build and grow, and has
served as its marshal, justice of the peace, and mayor. His stepfather named
the town. Mr. Estes had lived in the community continuously since he was a
child with the exception of a few months spent west. When three he came with
his parents from Claiborne County, Tenn. in a covered
wagon drawn by an ox team to Iowa. They settled
just across the line in Missouri. With the
gold rush on in California Mr. Estes' father and Patrick Willis, with others from that
vicinity, went to California. Mr. Willis
returned in two years, Mr. Estes' father remained owing to the mining claims he
had accumulated. However, within the next year he was able to sell out and
accompanied by a man from Kentucky started on
the homeward trek but never reached there. Later investigations led relatives
to believe the man from Kentucky had robbed
Estes and did away with him. Mr. Estes' mother, left with two children, wove
cloth, made clothing and did various kinds of work to care for the children. A
few years passed and she married Alonso
Works [sic]. At the age of nine Mr. Estes was put out to the home of a Mr. Fulton
and worked there until he was fifteen. About that time his brother Will made
plans to accompany his uncle, Patrick
Willis, on his second trip out west. James did not receive permission from
his mother to go and had to remain home. The men left with their ox teams,
covered wagons, and supplies. But three days later James ran off from his
mother and started out walking to catch his brother and the others. He knew
they would have to wait in Council Bluffs for others to join them as the
government stopped all immigrants until a large number were banded together so
that they might travel with less danger from the attacks of Indians. In the
group with Patrick Willis and the
two boys were Mr. Willis' children, including the late Mrs. W. O. Foxworthy, Monroe
Willis, and Mandy Emmons. James
caught up with the Willis family at Council
Bluffs and drove the ox team for them. Considerable trouble
was encountered on their trip with the Indians stealing their horses. Mr. Estes
recalls the many nights when he was detailed to duty with another man to lie
out and guard the horses. "In those days," says Mr. Estes, "The
horses could smell Indians and when the Indians were near they would hover
around the guards. They would walk over us and around us but never hurt or touched
us. The coyotes often made them nervous too."
In Oregon he chopped
wood for boats and earned enough money to travel back to Salt Lake
City, Utah, and there
he fell in with a mule team. After leaving Salt Lake
City, he learned that he was with Morgan's men from
Morgan's gang, and a few men from Quantrill's gang, who were masking as
immigrants.
Jim's
daughter, Vee Estes Dowling
[1889-1995], who died two weeks shy of her 106th birthday, also left a written
account of the stories told to her by her father. The author met her in 1975,
and she verbally gave the same account:
When my father was fourteen, Patrick Willis…started across the
plains to Oregon. My father's
older brother Will went with him. My
father wanted to go, but his mother wouldn't give her consent. He told his
mother that he was going to Decatur [Iowa], a nearby
town, but he ran away and caught up with another uncle, Jackson Breeding, where he joined their train. [Apparently the
Breedings started a little after the Willises with plans to meet in Council
Bluff.]
There was quite a train by this time and
they followed the "Old Oregon" trail.
Uncle Patrick, who was their leader,
chose the places where they camped for the night. At one place in Nebraska
there was a nice little spot where some insisted would be a nice place to camp
for the night, but Uncle Patrick decided to camp on higher ground. That night
there was a cloudburst and another wagon train that had camped in the lower
area were almost obliterated. The wagons were washed into the Platte River, all but one
which was bolted down. This wagon belonged to the son-in-law of the leader of
that train. He saved the life of his wife but all the rest of the women and all
of the children under sixteen were drowned. The woman who was saved had lost
her baby and my father said she wore a black sunbonnet and never spoke a word
the rest of the way. They saved what they could and went on with Uncle Patrick's train.
The following is from Jim Estes himself. It is in the possession of his descendants:
Early one morning, before the camp had
broken up, a band of Indians swooped down upon us driving away nine of the
horses. The horses wandered off about a mile and one of Leroy Goins' boys and I
went after them. I looked up on the bluff and saw an Indian standing up
straight. I told the boy to look up and the Indian dropped. About that time the
Indians swooped down out of the canyon and drove the horses before us. That was
the last we ever saw of those horses. The next morning after the Indians had stolen
our horses, two Indians came circling down out of the brush. Not too far from
us a widow had a mule team hobbled together. The hobbles had been taken off and
the mules driven off. The woman's brother took after the Indians, thinking it
was one of our men. He discovered it was Indians and shot two of them with the
repeating rifle he was carrying. They shot him through the larynx with an
arrow. The arrow had a spear on it. We all thought he would die and they just
loaded him into the wagon. They discovered when he shaved his beard that the
arrow had gone straight through his larynx.
We had only two horses and a pony left
with us. The Indians attacked us about seventy-five miles west of Laramie. The
soldiers were stationed there, but before they could do anything, they had to
get orders from Washington.
We traveled on the north side of the Platte River where the
grass had all been eaten, but it was green on the other side. Our outfit stood
looking, wishing they could get the cattle across. Uncle Patrick told them if they could furnish a pony, he would
furnish a boy. While the cattle ate, I lay down and rested and started back
about midnight. The stream was full of big rocks and the current was so swift
that it was hard for the pony to keep his footing. I held to his mane and
sometimes went clear under. I was thoroughly wet and hungry. When we crossed
the Cascades, I drove ahead. All of the wagons turned over except ours. When we
went down big Laurel Hill, I drove four yoke of cattle--three yokes behind and
one on the front axle. It was about a half mile down and the trees showed where
the ropes had been tied to them.
Patrick and Betsy Ann Willis' granddaughter, Rose
Cooper Goodrich [1875-1960], told the author one detail about the journey
that does not appear elsewhere. Her mother, Lucy Ann "Louisiana"
Willis Cooper [1846-1926], said that
there was a man with the wagon train who foolishly shot at some Indians and
received an arrow in the leg. Later the wound became gangrenous and needed to
be amputated. The men held him down while another sawed off the diseased leg
without the benefit of pain-killers, and he was put into his wagon and the
wagons rolled on. [Was this a corruption of the arrow in the throat story?]
Kermuth Carrington [1914-?] of Saratoga, CA,
and his cousin Charles Henderson of Pasco,
WA, descendants of Salem
Pittman, in the 1960’s told of Oregon Trail stories
passed down their branch of the family. An Enoch Williams and a Bill Willis,
probably a kinsman, and their families were among Patrick Willis' party. Most
of the children rode on horses. The group had one wagon of meat and one of
flour. Had they run out of flour along the trail, it would have cost them $16
for a hundred-pound barrel of flour at the forts along the way, an exorbitant
price in those days. Indians could be seen perched on the bluffs watching the
travelers. At Fort Bridger some members of Patrick's party became ill with a
fever. John R. Stanley lost his
father-in-law, James Perkypile, and his wife Juliette Perkypile Stanley. Stanley
would later marry Nancy True's
daughter, Emaline True when they
arrived in Oregon. Somewhere along the trail a daughter of Patrick and Betsy Ann, either Mandy
or Lizzie, fell off a wagon and was
injured. She was taken to a doctor at one of the forts along the trail when
they reached there.
Vee Estes Dowling told me in 1975 that at the crossing of a large
river, Betsy Ann was riding in a
wagon driven by her crippled son, Monroe.
Midstream, when the current began to tilt the wagon back and forth precariously,
Betsy Ann became frightened and called out to have the men rescue her and
Monroe. [Monroe probably couldn't swim due to his disability.] The
two were put on horses to continue their journey across.
The
husband of Betsy Ann's sister Nancy True,
James True, had a drinking problem.
He became mean when he drank. At Fort Walla Walla, James was able to purchase liquor, and he got
drunk--and mean. He beat his wife with a bull whip. She later divorced him.
Arriving
in Oregon, the Willises probably settled in Yamhill County because it was there, in the county seat of Lafayette, that their eldest daughter, Lucy
Ann “Louisiana” Willis, married John
Shepherd Cooper [1838-1901] in January of 1865. During the time the
Willises spent in Oregon, Patrick and Betsy Ann became grandparents in late
1865 when Lucy Ann gave birth to a son, James Patrick Willis, on November 2. As
the first grandchild, the baby was probably coddled by his grandparents and
aunts. But the boy and his mother came down with dysentery or the cholera in
October of 1866, and the baby quickly dehydrated and died. Lucy Ann, pregnant
with her second child, survived.
Betsy
Ann did not like Oregon and its rainy weather. After the Civil War ended, she
lobbied to return to Missouri, but then the Oglala Sioux under Chief Red Cloud were
at war with the whites threatening travelers on the Bozeman
and Oregon trails. In 1866 or 1867 the Willises, minus Lucy Ann,
returned to Missouri. Due to the Indian threat, the wagons had to be
accompanied by a military escort. Separating from their daughter with such a
distance to lie between them had to be wrenching. Lucy Ann's baby, a daughter,
was born on April 7, 1867. She was named Elizabeth
Ann Cooper for her grandmother.
About
this time, the Pittman sisters also separated. The Trues moved south to Lake County, California, James' drinking probably having alienated Nancy's family from him. Jackson Breeding and his wife Mary
Pittman Breeding moved at first to Umatilla County, Oregon, near Pendleton. They were there during the 1870
Census. About 1875 they moved to Morrow County, near the town of Heppner.
The
1870 U.S. Census of Lindley Township, Mercer County, Missouri, Household #97
shows Patrick Willis, age 47, born
West Virginia [sic], farmer, $1,600 worth of real estate,, and $400 of personal
property; Elizabeth Willis, 42, born
TN; Elizabeth Willis, 17, born MO; Amanda Willis, 14, born MO; Melissa Willis, 12, born MO; Emily Willis, age 6, born MO; James M. Willis, 22, born TN; married
in April; $550 in personal property; Malinda
Willis, age 20, born IN. Malinda was Monroe's new wife.
Not
much else is known of the Willises' lives in the 1870's. Presumably they busied
themselves with their farm work as Monroe and Melinda provided them with four new
grandchildren. In letters from Oregon, the Willises learned of Lucy Ann’s giving birth to
three more children that decade. On April 15, 1879, the Willises' daughter Liz married Oliver Foxworthy, who would continue his studies after his marriage
to become first a teacher then a doctor and mayor of the town of Leon,
Decatur County, Iowa. The Willis family had photographs taken that year to
send to Louisiana in Washington Territory. It had been twelve years since she had seen any
members of her family and had asked them to have photographs made so she could
see what everyone looked like.
The
1880 Census showed the Willises still in Lindley Township in Household #211. Patrick was listed as age 58, farmer, born VA, father born VA,
mother born VA. Elizabeth was listed as age 52, born TN, father born North Carolina, mother born Tennessee [should say Virginia]. Their only children living at home were Sarah Willis, 19, born MO, father born
VA, mother born TN, and Emma Willis,
16, with the same information.
In 1882 Patrick purchased a parcel described
as the east 1/2 of Lot 2 northwest, Section 4, Township 66, Range 25, and 3
acres in the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 33, Township
67, Range 25.
The
Willises were saddened to hear of the death of Louisiana's oldest surviving child, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Ann Cooper, on January 12,
1884, from diabetes. The girl, called "Sis" by the family, had been
named for her grandmother. Probably to uplift Louisiana's spirits, it was decided that she would make a trip
on the newly opened Northern Pacific transcontinental railroad after the baby
she was expecting was old enough to travel. She would not be bringing any of
her children except the baby. The baby, Zelda
Jane Cooper, was born on Leap Year Day, February 29, 1884, and Louisiana arrived in Missouri a couple of months later. It had been seventeen years
since she had seen her family.
Louisiana was anxious to see all of her family. She went
visiting at Aunt Sallie Harper's home and the homes of all of her siblings and
cousins. She had a photograph taken of the baby in the border town of Lineville, IA, so that her parents would have something to
remember. She must have expressed amazement at all the changes that had taken
place in Missouri in those intervening twenty years since she had left
there in 1864. She talked a great deal about her life in the Palouse Country of
Eastern Washington, and her unmarried sister, Sade, 24, decided to return with Louisiana to Washington. This no doubt assuaged Louisiana's sadness at parting with her family, but it must
have caused some remorse in her parents to lose yet another daughter to the
West. The parting at the railroad station was the last the Willises would see
of these two daughters. Letters came from Washington Territory telling how Sade was teaching school and then about
her marriage to store keeper James Dell, on May 21, 1885. Later that year Louisiana had to report that her daughter Rose Cooper, 10, had come down with the whooping cough and had to
be sent away to a midwife's shack to keep from infecting her other children.
But the baby Zelda was already
infected and died on August 22.
It
was that year, 1885, that the Willises' youngest daughter "Emma"
married Gold Elmore. Grandchildren were being born fairly regularly now, and
Patrick and Betsy could be pleased that they had lost only one of their eight
children, although they had lost several grandchildren by then. On August 12,
1888, Emma's daughter, Iva Elmore, 1
1/2 died. That September Aunt Sally
Harper marked her 99th birthday, and the Harper clan began to talk about a
big celebration for her next birthday.
1889
dawned and Aunt Sally still appeared
vigorous and intent on being there for her centennial. On February 18, one of Monroe's twin sons, Ray
Willis, died at the age of four months. In August, at the age of sixty-one,
Betsy Ann became ill and died on August 15, the month before Aunt Sally's
celebration. The following month Monroe's oldest daughter, Hettie, died at the age of
nineteen on September 11, 1889. Patrick probably made it to Aunt Sallie's
birthday party on September 27 with a heavy heart. On November 18, a second
child of Emma's, six-month old Cecil
Elmore died. Emma had no other children. The year had been hard on Patrick.
The following day the sixty-seven year-old Patrick died, November 19, 1889. On
the same day in a far-off village named Camere Nuovo, in Italy, Teresa
Giordano was born. One day she would
cross the Atlantic to the United States.
Patrick
and Betsy share a tombstone at Freedom Cemetery, 1 ½ miles north of Saline,
Mercer County, Missouri, and three miles south of the Iowa state line. The estate gave each of the
Willis children $211.08 in May of 1892.
The Children of Patrick and Elizabeth Pitman Willis
[1] LUCY
ANN “LOUISIANA” WILLIS, our ancestor, was born 6 November 1846, in Claiborne County, Tennessee. While her parents were living in Yamhill County, Oregon, 1864-1867, she met John Shepherd Cooper [1838-1901]. They were married at the courthouse in Lafayette, OR, on 31 January 1865. The couple settled on Grand Island, an island form by the Willamette River and Lambert Slough. John’s father lived across the slough on the
west side of the Willamette River, but two of his sisters’
families lived on the island also. In
December 1874 and January 1875, the family moved to Whitman County, Washington, settling between the small
towns of Diamond and St. John. In 1888 the family moved into the town of Oakesdale. There John died in 1901. Louisiana rented out their home and
went to work as the housekeeper for a bachelor sharecropper who was farming her
sister Amanda’s land. After that she
lived with some nieces but then moved to Spokane to live with her daughter Emma Cloyd Elliott. She died 28 May 1926 in Spokane and was buried there. There were seven children, four of whom
lived to adulthood: Lilia McClure 1869-1959; Enoch
Cooper 1871-1957; Rose Hodgson
Goodrich 1875-1960; and Emma Cloyd
Elliott 1881-1978. Her full biography is elsewhere in this work.
[2] JAMES
MONROE WILLIS was called “Monroe” by the family. He was named after his uncle James Monroe Willis [1817-after 1880],
who was born during the presidency of James Monroe. Monroe was born 6 February 1848, in Claiborne County, Tennessee, the only son of Patrick Willis and Elizabeth Pittman
among their eight children. Somehow Monroe came to have a crippled leg
and was handicapped by this. After his
sister Lucy Ann married while the family was in Oregon, Monroe was the oldest child among
those in the Missouri-Iowa locus. In
April of 1870 he married Melinda McGrew
[1850-1892]. Together they had nine
children. Monroe became the postmaster of Pleasanton, Decatur County, Iowa, just across the Missouri state line from where his
parents lived. In 1892 Melinda foolishly
walked barefoot in the snow, caught pneumonia, and died from the disease. Monroe’s teenaged daughters were able to help in
the care of their younger siblings while Monroe worked. Monroe was mayor of Pleasanton according to the court
records of June 15, 1915-January 22, 1916, but in his old age, he lived in the
home of Gold Elmore, whose first
wife, Emma Willis, had been Monroe’s sister. Monroe died in Pleasanton about 1924 and presumably
is buried there. His children were Amer, Ethel, Ola, Effie Jane, Marion [male], Blanche, Vern, Elga, and McGrew. McGrew lived in Hollywood and was a prominent screen
writer.
[3] MARGARET
V. WILLIS was born in February of 1850 in Mahaska County, Iowa. She probably died before 1870 and was not
married. She was not listed in the 1870 Census, and no record of a marriage has
been found. She was not mentioned in the
1889 will of her father.
[4] MARY
ELIZABETH “LIZZIE” WILLIS was born 1 May 1853 in Mercer County, Missouri. On 13 April 1879, she married Oliver Foxworthy [1855-1935]. She was a teacher and worked while her
husband attended medical school. He
began his practice in Weldon, Decatur County, Iowa, but in 1902 moved to
nearby Leon, Iowa, after completing more medical studies. Oliver was later mayor of the town of Leon also. Elizabeth died 3 October 1929 in Leon. She was buried there. The couple had one child, Ollie Elizabeth Foxworthy[1896-1995],
who was married to Thomas Kendall Murrow,
a judge in Des Moines. They had three or four children.
[5] AMANDA
ARZINA “MANDY” WILLIS was born 20 May 1856, in Mercer County, Missouri. When she was eight, the family moved to Yamhill County, Oregon, to avoid the Civil
War. Three years later the family
returned to Missouri. Amanda became a teacher and married Henry Emmons [1856-1906] in the late 1880’s.
Soon after her marriage, both of her parents died in 1889. She was pregnant at the time with her
daughter Theodosia “Theo” Marie Emmons,
who was born 3 February 1890. On 12 April 1894, a son, Schuyler Emmons, was born. The Emmonses moved to Whitman County, Washington, in the early 1900’s and
bought a large farm. On 2 November 1905, eleven year old Schuyler died of
“yellow jaundice” [hepatitis]. Soon afterward, in 1906, Henry Emmons died. About 1910 Theo eloped with her first cousin, McGrew Willis [1889-1983], son of
Mandy’s brother, Monroe Willis. McGrew had made it known to his cousin, Vee Estes Aiken, that he was merely
after Aunt Amanda’s money. Theo was
Amanda’s only heir, and Amanda was well off.
McGrew convinced Theo to move to Southern California, where he had ambitions of
entering the film industry. Soon
afterward, Mandy moved to Hollywood and rented her Whitman County farm to sharecropper Henry
George. Mandy’s sister, Louisiana Willis,
served as Henry George’s housekeeper to support herself. Theo’s
marriage was childless, and the couple divorced in Hollywood, CA, in the 1920’s. A
descendant of McGrew from a later marriage sent this news article about the
divorce:
Wife, Left As “Drag,”Is Granted Divorce
Woman, Not Greatness, Was Husband’s Goal, is Her Charge
Married life was apparently a drag on the ambition of F. McGrew Willis, Scenario writer. He wanted to be free and Mrs. Willis objected to being set aside, she says, but her appeal
was fruitless. Mr. Willis left, she declared, and for some time she stayed on at
the hotel, hoping he would return.
Yesterday, Judge Walton J. Wood gave her a divorce on the grounds of
desertion. The evidence showed there had
been a property settlement.
“There is no community property except an automobile,
and he has that,” she told the court. “I
wanted him to stay, but he deserted me for another woman.” A witness testified that Mr. Willis declared he was held down by marriage. “By being free he hoped to become a great
man,” he said. In Mrs. Willis’ original divorce action, she named another woman. The
amended suit charged simple desertion.
Attorney S. S. Miller represented Mr.
Willis.
Mandy
lived in Hollywood near Theo for many years [1924-1941]. She died in Hollywood following a stroke, on 21
October 1941, at the age of eighty-five. For a couple of years in the late
1930’s, Amanda’s niece, Cloyd Cooper Elliott,
lived with her in Hollywood. Theo, who married Edward Nittinger after her divorce from
McGrew, lived in San Jacinto, CA, for many of her later years. She died in May 1981, apparently in Irvine, CA, at age ninety-one. There
are no living descendants of Amanda
Willis Emmons.
[6] MELISSA
‘LISSA’ WILLIS was born 2 May 1858, in Mercer County, Missouri. In 1880 she married John Inman in Mercer County. In the early 1890’s the Inmans joined Lissa’s
sisters in Whitman County, Washington. Lissa and John Inman had two children, Orrie
and Grace. Orrie, a boy, died as a child
from scarlet fever. Grace married a man
named Hutchinson and died in a rest home in
Colfax, Whitman County, WA, in the 1960’s. She had no children of her own, only
stepchildren. Melissa, called “Lissa” by
the family, died about 1908. John Inman was still alive in 1926. This line is extinct. Melissa was rather homely.
[7] SARAH
ANN “SADE” WILLIS was born 20 June 1860, in Mercer County, Missouri. In 1884 she was yet unmarried and accompanied
her sister, Louisiana Cooper, to Whitman County, WA. There she taught briefly before marrying St. John storekeeper James Monroe Dell [1855-1916]. We know that one of her students was Louisiana’s nephew, James Paul “Pearl” Lumison, because we have a
merit card to him signed by her. She
probably taught all of the Lumison and Cooper children at the time. [including
our ancestor Rose Ella Cooper 1875-1960].
Sade
was better looking than most of her sisters and more spirited. On 8 February
1897, at age thirty-six, she died in childbirth and was buried at the St. John Cemetery. The child also died. She had three other children: daughters Vera Delanie Dell [1886-1965] and Flossie Dell [1890-1970], who never married; and a son Cecil Dell [1888-1976]. Cecil managed a J. C. Penny store in Billings, Montana.
[8] EMILY
FRANCES “EMMA” WILLIS was born 16 December 1863, in Mercer County, Missouri, and was a baby when the
Willises crossed the plains to Oregon in 1864. She was only about
three years old when the family returned to Missouri.. About 1885 Emma married Gold Elmore [24 Nov. 1851-2 March 1924]. It is believed that Emma was a
consumptive. The Elmores had two
children: Iva Elmore [13 February 1887-12 August 1888] and Cecil Elmore [26 May 1889-18 November
1889]. Emma died 20 March 1891, at age
twenty-seven, and was buried in the Freedom Cemetery. Gold then married Luella Mae Henderson [1875-1963] and had another family. He and Emma’s brother Monroe were close
friends. When they were old, Monroe lived with Gold and his
family in the town of Pleasanton, Decatur County, Iowa. There were no descendants who survived Emma. She, Gold, and Luella are all buried at the Freedom Cemetery north of Saline, Mercer County, MO. [Where Patrick and Elizabeth
Pittman Willis are buried]. Our Aunt
Emma Cloyd Cooper Elliott [1881-1978] said she was named for this
aunt.
[Patrick Willis and
Elizabeth Ann Pitman > Lucy Ann “Louisiana Willis Cooper > Rose
Ella Cooper Hodgson Goodrich > Lois Belle Hodgson Serrano Menefee >
Mildred Doreen Serrano Rivara > Donald Lee Rivara > Rainie Anne Rivara
> Salman and Rehan Saeed]
