Patrick Willis 1822-1889 Elizabeth Ann "Betsy Ann" Pittman
1827-1889
By Don Rivara, (donrivara@aol.com) March 2004
Patrick Willis was born in Hanover County, Virginia, on May 15, 1822. We know this from a Bible sheet in the possession of his grandson
Cecil Dell in the 1970's. Patrick was a son of William "Buck" Willis [1795-1878] and his first wife
Elizabeth Kersey [c.1798-c.1841]. Both parents were from Virginia. They were
married April
30, 1816, in Louisa County, VA, which is adjacent to Hanover County. Buck was a
veteran of the War of 1812, serving in Capt. William Dade's company under
General Porterfield in September 1814. He was
discharged at Holly Springs Camp, VA, in February of 1815, serving only in the
state of Virginia. For his military service, Buck was granted military land warrants in Claiborne County, Tennessee. The family
moved there in the middle 1820's. In addition Buck purchased 90 acres of school
land for $300. When the government surveyed the western lands, they set up a
system of townships made up of thirty-six sections one-mile square. One of
these thirty-six sections was designated "school land," the sale or
rental of which was used to build a school for the township. It was part of
this square mile that Buck purchased. Buck is believed to have been the son of
the Joel Willis that shows up on the
1830 Claiborne County, Tennessee Census. At that time Joel was a widower between sixty and seventy years
old. He appears to be living with a man in his thirties with a wife in her
twenties and three children under five as well as a female between ten and
fifteen years old. A Joel Willis earlier showed up on the 1810 Census of King
and Queen County Virginia, on page 228. The household consisted of one female of 0-10 years of
age; one female from 10-16 years of age; two females from 16-26 years of age;
one female aged 26-45; nine slaves; one male 10-16 years of age [Buck], and one
male over 45 years of age [Joel]. A John
J. Willis appears also in that census with exactly the same household
makeup. It is believed that Joel was enumerated twice in that census, once as
John J. Willis and once as Joel Willis. That this John Joel Willis was Buck's
father is further evidenced by the appearance of John J. Willis and a John
Williams as administrators of securities in a legal matter in Hanover County,
Virginia, in 1827 where Patrick Willis
was born in 1822 [Hanover County, VA, Chancery Wills and Notes]. In the 1830
U.S. Census of Claiborne County, Tennessee, the family of Joel Willis consisted
on one male under 5; one male aged 20-30; one male aged 30-40; and one male
aged 60-70 [Joel]; one female under 5; one female aged 10-15; and two females
aged 20-30. Woodson Willis and Hugh Willis of Claiborne County, Tennessee, may also have
been sons of Joel, notwithstanding that one of the censuses there showed Hugh
to be much older than he appeared in other censuses [an error, I think]. The
1830 Census of Claiborne County also listed the family of William C.
"Buck" Willis: one male aged 30-40 [Buck]; one male aged 10-15 [James];
one male aged 5-9 [Patrick]; one male under 5 [Robert Fleming]; one female aged
30-40 [Elizabeth Kersey Willis]; one daughter aged 10-15 [Charity?]; and one
daughter age 5-9 [name unknown]. Patrick was the third child of Buck and
Elizabeth. His siblings were James, 1817; a sister [Charity?] c.1819; another
sister c.1825; Robert Fleming "Flem,"
c.1828; Watson "Watt" Willis, c.1831; Luretta
"Retta," c.1833; Bartlett "Bartly," c.1838; and Docker
G. "Dock," c.1840. Elizabeth Kersey Willis died after the census in
1840 or in 1841, and Buck married Elzira "Elziry" King, on January 21, 1842. She was sixteen years old at the time, younger than Buck's three
oldest children. He was forty-six. Elzira produced
another eight children for Buck, half-siblings to Patrick: Amanda, c.1844;
Sarah, c.1846; Lucy Ann, c.1847; America, c.1849; William, Junior, c.1851;
Elizabeth, c.1854; John, c.1855; and Angeline,
c.1860. That made seventeen children in the family. While all his half-siblings
were being born, Patrick married Elizabeth Ann "Betsy Ann" Pittman on
December 14,
1845, when he was twenty-three and she, eighteen. They
were married in Claiborne County by George M. Cheek, a
justice of the peace, who was the husband of Olivia Hurst Cheek, the sister of Silvia Hurst Pittman. The young couple probably attended the Big Spring Primitive Baptist Church in a hamlet
called Springdale between Tazewell and Bean Station. Betsy Ann's grandfather, Thomas Hurst, was the preacher there
until that August, when he retired due to age and infirmity. This log church
was built in 1796 and is the oldest church in Tennessee. Betsy Ann was
the daughter of Silvia Hurst Pittman
[c.1805-1860] and James Pittman [c.1795-c1837]. She was born November 26, 1827, near Tazewell, Claiborne
County, Tennessee. She and her sister Martha Emeline were
probably twins since they were born the same year. Her father died when Betsy
was about ten. She was third of seven children, all girls except for Betsy's
younger brother Salem. Her siblings were Nancy Pittman True [1824-after 1880]; Mary
"Poppy" Pittman Breeding [1825-after 1870]; Martha Emeline Pittman Allen [1827-early 1850's]; Olive
"Ollie" Pittman Estes Work [1829-1872]; Salem Rolle
Pittman [1832-1876]; and Louisa Pittman [1834-?]. Betsy Ann's family in
Claiborne was large. Her great grandfather, "Mill Creek John" Hurst [c.1735-1817] and several of his large
family had settled there. Her grandparents, Thomas Hurst [c.1764-1846] and Silvia
Breeding Hurst [c.1767-1854], also had a large family in Claiborne County. There were a number
of Pittman relatives as well. Living close to the widowed Silvia Hurst Pittman
in the 1840 U.S. Census of Claiborne County were the families of Sterling
Pittman, aged 70-80, probably Betsy Ann's grandfather; and William Pittman,
aged 30-40, probably an uncle to Betsy. The Pittmans,
along with other Pittman kin, had settled along Little Yellow Creek in both
Harlan County, Kentucky and in adjacent northern Claiborne County, Tennessee. Many of her
family were slave owners, including her Hurst grandparents.
During the first few years of their marriage, Patrick and Betsy Ann remained in
Claiborne. Their first two children were born there. The first child, Lucy Ann,
was born November 6, 1846. Later she
would style her name Louisiana as did another Lucy Ann, who was a cousin of her husband. The second
child was a son, James Monroe Willis, born February 6, 1848. He would be called Monroe. Monroe was to be the only son of the Willis's eight children. He was
handicapped by a clubfoot or another similar defect. He was lame and could not
run and engage in normal activities that other boys did. Betsy Ann and her
siblings were close, and the men the sisters married were companionable too. In
1849 the daughters were given their inheritance by their mother from the sale
of the family farm, and they emigrated together to Mahaska County, Iowa. In the caravan were Nancy Pittman True and her family, Mary
"Poppy" Pittman Breeding and her family, sixteen year old Salem
Pittman, Elizabeth and Patrick and their two children, and Patrick's brother
James Willis and his family. The Pittman siblings left behind their mother, who
was living with her daughter Emeline Allen's family,
and their sister Olive and her family. Patrick's father was surrounded by
children from both of his marriages, so the emigration of his oldest two sons
was probably not as traumatic to him as was Silvia's loss of all but two of her
children to the West. Betsy Ann's grandmother, Silvia Breeding Hurst [c.1767-1854], was also still alive at the
time. The Willises and Pittmans
weren't to sojourn long in Mahaska County. The 1850
Census, in Household #167 enumerated on August 18, shows them living there next
door to the Trues. Patrick is shown as age 28, born
in VA, owning no property. The rest of the family were listed as Elizabeth, 21, born TN;
Lucy A., age 3, born TN; James M., 2, born TN; Margarette,
6 mos., born IA. 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 the Pittman sisters' mother Silvia Hurst
Pittman. A John Willis of Mercer County may have been
an uncle of Patick's; if so, that would have been another
attraction to the area. The families seem to have thrived here, but the clouds
of civil war were looming. After the families were well settled in, Olive
Pittman Estes and her family joined her siblings in Mercer County in 1853. 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, Jackson Breeding, and
Salem Pittman headed west. They were to be gone two years, 1853-1855, in which
the women had to tend to their homes and families. The farms were probably
allowed to lay fallow, but the women certainly had to maintain large gardens
for family produce. When the brothers-in-law agreed that it was time to return
home, George Estes chose to remain, 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. Upon his return from California, 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 Secton 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. 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], Mr. 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. Missouri abutted the new Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory where
the pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces were at war with each other after the Kansas and Nebraska
Act of 1854. People from neighboring Missouri and Iowa traveled to Kansas to register to
vote, stating that they were Kansas residents. They
wished to vote for or against slavery, depending on their viewpoint. Salem
Pittman was registered as a voter in Kansas although he
didn't live there. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Patrick and Betsy
Ann added five more daughters to their family: Margaret V. Willis, born
February 1850; Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Willis, May 1, 1853; Amanda Arzina "Mandy," May 20, 1856; Melissa J. Willis,
May 2, 1858; and Sarah Ann "Sade" Willis,
June 20, 1860. When the war was in full swing, their last child, Emily Frances
"Emma" Willis, was born December 16, 1863. Note that three of Patrick's daughters had the same names and his
younger half-sisters: Lucy Ann, Amanda, and Sarah. 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, being in a
border state, would have a tumultous four years
following 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, real
estate value 2,000, personal property value $1,000. Other members of the
household were Elizabeth, wife, age 33, born TN; Louisiana, daughter, age 14,
born TN; James M., son, age 12, born TN; M.V., daughter, age 10; born IA; Mary
E., age 7, born MO; Amanda, daughter, age 4, born MO; and Malissa,
daughter, age 2, born MO. Salem Pittman was among those who registered to vote
for a free Kansas. When the war finally started in 1861, Salem enlisted in the
Union Army in Company M, 6th Missouri L. M. Cavalry. It is believed that the Willises' daughter Margarette
died about this time, though we have no direct proof. She was not living with
the family in the 1870 U.S. Census, and there are no photos, no stories, no
marriage record, nothing to show her alive past the 1860 Census. It is
conceivable that she married elsewhere and moved away, however. Missouri, as a border
state, probably suffered from the most atrocities of any state during the war.
Not only were the regular forces fighting, but guerilla groups were fighting
each other will, no holds barred. Missouri civilians lived
in terror. The situation led the families of Patrick and Betsy Ann and those of
her sisters Nancy True and Mary Breeding to seek an escape in the West. In the
spring of 1864 they left for Oregon, with Patrick
Willis elected wagon master. Betsy Ann's sister Olive 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, fifteen, 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. Will Estes
lived out his life in Oregon, but Jim Estes was to return to Missouri a short while
later. 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 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, and 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. 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 Elizabeth 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. Kermuth
Carrington [1912-?] of Saratoga, CA, and his cousin Charles Henderson of Pasco, WA, descendants of Salem Pittman, in the 1960 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 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 with her lame son Monroe driving. Midstream, when the
current began to tilt the wagon back and forth precariously, she 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 horse whip. It is believed that the Willises
lived in Yamhill County because it was there, in the county seat of Lafayette, that their
eldest daughter, Lucy Ann, 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 rails. In 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 be between
them had to be wrenching. Lucy Ann's baby, a daughter, was born on April 7, 1867. She was named Elizabeth Ann for her grandmother. The birth would have
coincided pretty closely with the earliest time that a wagon caravan could
depart from Oregon; so it is unknown if the Willises were able
to see this grandchild. 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. Nancy divorced True in California. Both James True and his ex-wife were still alive at the time of the
1880 U.S. Census of Lake County. Some of their children were still living there
at least as late as the 1930's. It is likely that Nancy True never saw her
siblings again after moving to California. Jackson
Breeding and his wife Mary Pittman Breeding moved at first to Umatilla County near Pendleton.
They were there during the 1870 Census. Later they moved to Morrow County. In 1875 the Breedings bought a lot in the town of Heppner, the county
seat, apparently to build a home there, but they also owned a 180-acre farm
nearby. By 1895 Mary was dead and Jackson lived alone.
Will Estes settled near the Breedings.
In 1903 his wife, Zotta, and their grown daughter,
Blanche, were two of the 250 who drowned in the cloudburst that destroyed
Heppner with a ten-foot wall of water coming down the canyon from Eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains. Zotta and Blanche had gone into town in their buggy while
Will worked on their farm. The Heppner tragedy is still infamous in United States meteorology history. Patrick and Betsy Ann's daughter Lucy Ann "Louisiana" Willis
Cooper [1846-1926] kept in contact with her Aunt Poppy [Mary] Pittman Breeding
and her cousin Will Estes. Louisiana moved to Whitman County, Washington Territory at the same time that the Breedings
and Will Estes moved to Morrow
County, Oregon. The distance between them wasn't so great, allowing occasional visits
to take place. Heading eastward with their military escort, the Willises had no relatives except their children, and at
that, minus Lucy Ann. But they did have family back in Missouri who would be
happy to see them. Most probably they felt a sense of tension due to the Indian
problem and probably saw Indians looking down at them from mountaintops as they
had in the trip west. It must have been a great sense of relief to reach Mercer County and see their
relatives and friends. It is believed that the Willises
had not sold their farmland and that this militated against their staying in Oregon. 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. From letters from Oregon, the Willises learned of Lucy Ann 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 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 [some genealogies have her mother born in Wise County, 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. Melissa and Amanda had
both married earlier that year. 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 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 take 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 years. 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 Monroe Dell, on May 21, 1885. Later that year Louisiana had to report that her daughter Rose, 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 may have seemed strange to Patrick and Betsy Ann that the
three children of Louisiana that they had seen were those who had died. [Not another would die
until 1957.] It was that year 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, 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 bent on being there for her centennial. On February 18, one of Monroe's twin sons,
Ray Willis, did 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 Sallie'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. His grandson had not yet been buried when Patrick slipped away the
next day, November 19, 1889, at the age of
sixty-seven. Aunt Sallie would live three more years.n
Patrick and Betsy share a tombstone at Freedom Cemetery north of
Saline, Mercer County, Missouri.
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