A Biography of Isaac Willis

William (b. England)>John Sr.>William>Isaac Willis

Locust Grove, 2014

Isaac was born the second of nine children to William Willis and Elizabeth Garnett at Locust Grove on the Rapidan river not far from Orange, VA on November 1st, 1774. There are not many accounts of Isaac’s life, as he spent most of it at his home of Locust Grove, but by all accounts seems to have loved the home and area where he was raised. He joined the nearby Crooked Run Baptist Church at age 25 and remained a prominent member all of his life.

Isaac Willis married his first cousin, Ann Garnett, daughter of Rueben Garnett and Mary Twyman on the 22nd of May, 1798. Together they lived at Locust grove, parenting eight children, but becoming the grandparents to over 160 grand children including the Willis 21, the 21 children of their child Larkin Willis, whose descendants are still prominent in central Virginia to this day.

Isaac was made a Captain of the militia by James Monroe during the later president’s tenure as Governor of Virginia. Oral tradition states that he served during the war of 1812, but there is little other evidence to that effect. Isaac seems still to have been known as Captain Isaac Willis to most of his contemporaries.

Oral Histories

There are two principle oral histories of Isaac Willis known to this author.

The first is an encounter he once had with a fellow militia soldier as a young man, who insulted Isaac and called implied that he was weak. He challenged Isaac to prove his strength, and upon said challenge, it is said that Isaac lifted him by his neck with one arm, and threw him into a fence with such force the fence was broken. The man composed himself and proclaimed that if Isaac would be so kind as to throw his horse over to him, he would gladly be on his way.

The second is a widely recanted tale and goes as follows:

“Leigh Garnett Taliaferro (1892-1986) tells the story of her mother Florence (Garnett) Garnett with a Yankee when she was about eight years old at “Locust Grove,” the house of her great-grandfather, Captain Isaac Willis. When Yankee officers rode up and tied their horses to the yard fence, Isaac Willis invited them to use the tie rack (as he did not want his fence destroyed). They disregarded this and proceeded to enter the house and demand breakfast. Little Florence stood by to operate the punka to keep the flies away (usually little black boys did this). As the officer rose from the table the corner of the punka struck his head. Florence, afraid she might be killed, ran and hid under he grandmother’s long skirt. When the danger had passed, Florence felt better and boasted, ‘I struck a Yankee!'”

Isaac Willis

Land and Slaves

There is much information (see below this section) that adds to evidence that Isaac was talented plantation owner. He expanded Locust Grove’s wealth all his life, and bought and sold much land. Records indicate that he successfully accumulated wealth, and expanded his home, livestock and slaves as a result.

Isaac owned 54 slaves in 1850 and possibly more who were freed at the end of the Civil War. There is one woman with several children all listed with the family name of Fry that are identified at the end of the war as having been Isaac’s slaves, but no other evidence exists to this author’s knowledge of the names of those whose denial of freedom helped build the wealth at Locust Grove.

Isaac’s Name on the 1850 Slave Schedule

1830 Letter

In or about 1805, Isaac’s father William Willis moved with, at one time or another, members of the Waggener family of Culpeper and Robert Garnett, Isaac’s wife’s father, to Kentucky to take up land granted to him from his service in the Revolutionary war. After Robert Garnett’s move in 1824, Isaac purchased of the Garnett’s land in Culpeper. This letter written to Oliver Garnett, Isaac’s brother-in-law and Robert Garnett’s son, was written in 1830, and likely referring to a partial payment for those tracts of land. It was written just months before Robert’s death on December 30th, 1830.

Issac’s 1830 Letter to his brother in law, Oliver Garnett

The following information provides more specific details on Isaac’s wealth and the Locust Grove Plantation:

POSTED BY MARK BALLARD:

From The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 16, #4, pgs. 270-280, “Culpeper County, Virginia, District of Aaron Lane, Virginia, 1800 Tax List”: “Willis, Isaaac: 1 white male, 7 horses owned, 2 slaves over 16”

A deed dated September 22, 1824 in Culpeper County (Deed Book RR, pg. 300). “From Robert Garnett Sr. of Culpeper to Isaac Willis of Culpeper for $3,510.00, 3 tracts on one of which the said Robert Garnett lives containing 212 acres, and one other tract containing 100 acres which was conveyed to Robert Garnett by John Waugh in 1793, and one tract containing 40 acres.”Isaac and Anne are nephew and niece to Robert Garnett. This is the year that Robert reportedly moved to Kentucky on horseback. This is probably his final dispersion of remaining property in Culpeper County, prior to the move. The 212 acre parcel seems to be the core parcel of “The Horseshoe” plantation, on the confluence of the Robinson and Rapidan Rivers, conveyed to Robert by his father Anthony in 1794, and apparently containing the house. The other 2 parcels are apparently adjacent to “The Horseshoe” or at least nearby, and were obtained by Robert in 1793 and 1803. (See notes on Anthony and Robert Garnett.)

A deed dated September 8, 1834 in Culpeper County (Deed Book #2, pg. 2). “From Isaac Willis and wife to George Morton of Orange, for $5,159.00, conveying 3 tracts in Culpeper County containing 212 acres, 100 acres, and 40 acres, being the same 3 tracts purchased by Isaac Willis from Robert Garnett, Sr. by deed dated September 22, 1824, of record in Culpeper.”These are obviously the same 3 parcels of land that were purchased 10 years earlier in 1824. Isaac and Anne apparently never lived on any of the parcels, living on the nearby “Locust Grove” plantation. This deed marked the passing of “The Horseshoe” plantation from the Garnett Family.According to the 1810 census of Culpeper Co., Isaac Willis’s household included: 3 free white males under 10, one free white male between 26 and 45 (presumably Isaac), one free white female under 10 and one between 10 and 16, one free white female between 26 and 45 and one 45 or over, and 24 slaves.

The following details of the life of Isaac Willis come from United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, in regards to Locus Grove Plantation in 1985 (special thanks to the Womeldorph Family):

Locust Grove was erected by a member of the Willis family on land patented by Governor Alexander Spotswood in the 1730’s. Though best known for his political career and exploration of the Virginia frontier, Spotswood was also an acquisitive landowner and entrepreneur; as such, he was a leading figure in the colony’s westward expansion into the Piedmont during the first decades of the 18th century. Through a series of shrewd maneuvers during his last years in office, Spotswood managed to accumulate a vast tract of some 85,000 acres on the western frontier, including the 40,000-acre Spotsylvania tract straddling the Rapidan in what is now Culpeper, Orange, and Spotsylvania counties.

To satisfy mandatory land-seating requirements, Spotswood and his heirs granted attractive long-term leases on the Spotsylvania tract – some extending a full generation or more – to some one hundred farm families unable to afford tracts of their own. Locust Grove Farm probably originated as one of these leases. In April 1767 William Willis, the likely builder of the house, purchased a tract from the executors of John Spotswood, son of the governor. This may well have been the same leased land that his father, John Willis, had conveyed to him earlier in a will of 1761

Although the original portion of Locust Grove may possibly have been erected as a tenant farm dwelling before 1760, the architectural evidence suggests that William Willis (1743-1802) built the one-room plan log house shortly after he purchased the parcel in 1767. The obituary of subsequent owner and occupant Isaac Willis (1774-1867), son of William Willis, states specifically that Isaac “died in the house in which he was born’-an unusual statement that implies the building was standing before 1774.

This pre-1774 house was a 16′ x 20′ squared-log or plank structure with full-dovetail corner notching. It had a sleeping loft, but no basement, and was heated by a large brick chimney containing a cooking fireplace. The interior was barren, having neither paint, plaster, nor sheathing, and the loft was reached by a simple ladder stair. Though extremely crude by present standards, by the standards of its day it was relatively large and well built, a fact that accounts for its survival to the present. The center piece of a roughly 300-acre farm, it was from an early date surrounded by a number of small out- buildings, farm structures, and slave cabins. Of these, only one – an antebellum smoke- house – survives.

The Locust Grove property appears on the state’s first tax list under the name of Joshua Willis in 1782. In an 1802 deed of gift, William Willis conveyed this same tract on the Rapidan River to his son Isaac, who acquired an a joining 308-acre parcel from his father in 1816, after William had moved to Kentucky.

Beginning in 1820, the year that the county land tax books began listing the value of buildings separately from land, the house and its outbuildings were assessed at $500, a sum consistent with what might be expected for a house the size of Locust Grove in its expanded, two-room planform. In 1840,a census year, the value of buildings dropped to $300, remaining at that general level until the 20th century. This suggests that no substantial improvements were made to the property after that date.

Isaac Willis owned and occupied the house from at least 1802 until his death in 1867 at age ninety-three. Family tradition states that Isaac was a member of the Virginia militia during the War of 1812, but he appears to have held no county or state offices. His obituary states that “he spent nearly the whole of his life on the premises” of his farm; that he had been a prominent member of the local Baptist church which he joined at age twenty-five; and that he had “lived in great harmony with his neighbors enjoying the confidence and esteem of all who knew him.”

The first statewide personal property tax, levied in 1815, shows that Willis owned fourteen adult slaves as well as nine horses and fifteen head of cattle. He appears to have owned few luxury household items, however, being taxed for only a chest of drawers and one “work of metal” (probably silverware or a clock) valued at over fifty dollars.

Tax records show that Willis continued to own between fifteen and twenty adult slaves from the 1820s through the 1850s. In 1852 he was taxed on nineteen slaves, 150 cattle, hogs and sheep, a “pleasure carriage” worth $40, and $120 worth of household furniture. A statistical sample of the local tax records shows that of those of assessed wealth Willis ranked among the upper ten percent of Culpeper taxpayers. On his death in 1867, two years after the Civil War, he left land valued at $11,198, as well as $1,123 worth of livestock, field implements and household furnishings. This was a substantial legacy, especially considering that over half his wealth – in the form of slaves – had been lost two years earlier following emancipation.

Willis’ wealth in slaves was consonant with the size of his farmstead. He gradually doubled his holdings from 608 acres in 1816 to 1,522 acres in 1844, a figure that remained constant into the 1850s. During this same period Isaac built or purchased a grist mill on the Rapidan. Standing in 1835 or before, it was valued at $400, a figure that suggests it was a modest frame structure of average size. Willis probably employed one of his slaves as the miller, and no doubt ground corn and wheat for neighboring farmers.

The historical record, together with the surviving architectural evidence provided by the house, shows that Isaac Willis, like most upper middle-class Virginia farmers of the Federal and antebellum eras, lived in surroundings that would be considered modest by 20th century standards. That he owned fifteen or more adult slaves (each valued, on the average, at a figure higher than that of his house and farm buildings) suggests that he could easily have afforded a larger and more pretentious dwelling had he wanted one. Instead, he remained content with the same sort of dwelling that most of his slaveholding peers inhabited. All the same, Willis made substantial improvements to the house during his tenure, adding new interior detailing and enlarging it from a two- or four-room house to one with eight smallish rooms (counting the four lean-tos and two upstairs loft chambers). It is important to realize that while Isaac Willis and his nine-member household lived without show, they lived in much greater comfort than had his father’s generation, as is demonstrated by the original one-room unit of Locust Grove.

In his 1867 will, Isaac Willis left the Locust Grove home tract, together with an adjoining 180-acre parcel, to his daughter Elizabeth Willis Garnett. In 1878 she sold the house and 418 acres to her son-in-law, James H. Goodwin. The property remained in the Goodwin family until 1970, when the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Womeldorph, purchased the dwelling and 130 acres. In the late 1970s, the Womeldorphs hired two highly respected Virginia architectural firms specializing in restoration to guide the renovation of the house. The job was completed in 1979, and today Locust Grove stands as a rare, representative example of a Federal period Piedmont farmhouse.

See the original document (and footnotes/bibliography) here