The Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser October 16, 1788 3:3 To be sold to the highest bidder, on 4th Monday November next, at Orange Court-house, a tract of land, containing by estimation 800 acres, lately the property of Major John W. Willis, known by the name of the Black Level tract, about 5 miles above Orange Court-house, on the main road leading thence to Albemarle Court-house. The above land is well calculated for the production of corn, wheat, and tobacco. There is on said tract, a considerable quantity of excellent meadow land, some of which has been improved; there is also a quarry of lime stone on it. --The land will be shewn to any person inclined to purchase it by Capt. Jonathan Cowherd. Credit will be allowed for one half the purchase money until November, 1789, and for the balance till Nov. 1790, on the purchaser giving bond with approved security to Matthew Maury. October 3, 1788. http://departments.umw.edu/hipr/www/Fredericksburg/buildads.htm and: http://genforum.genealogy.com/nc/messages/12661.html http://john.rootsweb.com/Willis/0040-n.html John Willis, eldest son of Daniel Willis and his wife Elizabeth, was born in 1759. He was a gallant officer in the Continental troops from NC during the Revolutionary War. He was a member of the General Assembly of North Carolina in 1782, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1791, a member of the Senate in 1794 and of the House of Representatives in 1795. While a member of the General Assembly in 1787, he was appointed one of a committee of five to ratify the Constitution of the United States. This was done just in time for NC to enter the Union as the twelfth state and to assist in the election of Washington as the first president. According to North Carolina records, John Willis was made Colonel of Cavalry in 1787 and commissioned Brigadier General by Governor Samuel Ashe in 1795. He was a lawyer, a large land owner, and an exporter and importer dealing with England. The records show that he was an ardent Whig and "much persecuted" by the Tories. He was a man of considerable wealth and donated the land on which the town of Lunberton now stands for the establishment of a county site in 1787. The first court of Robeson County was held at his house until a Court House could be built. He also established the Academy of which David Kerr was president. John Willis was also a civil engineer and was engaged by his friend Gen. John Sevier to survey and lay off the City of Nashville and its boundary line and to do other engineering work. He was granted a large tract of land for this. Ashe's History of North Carolina states on page 167, Vol. II, that "John Willis established a mail line between Fayetteville, NC, and Tennessee. A license was issued by Duncan McRae, the US Internal Revenue Collector, for $9.00 for a four wheeled carriage called a coache, owned by General John Willis and having a top and on springs and to be drawn by 4 hurses, for the conveyance of more than one person, for the year ending 30th Sept. 1802. This also carried the mail." In 1779, John Willis was married to Asenath Barnes, daughter of Abram Barnes and Martha Fort. It is in the lovely, tender letters to his wife, and in his last will, that we have glimpses of his noble character, his fineness of soul and his faith in God. To John Willis and his wife, Asenath Barnes, there were born in Robeson County, NC, ten children. When the father was away in General Assembly or attending to business at Georgetown or Charleston, S. Carolina, the letters to his wife are full of tender admonitions that the children be guarded from evil, that they be not allowed to hear the wicked language of the place, and that they be kept in school. Special provision is made in his will for their teacher, David Kerr, who afterwards studied law and became first US District Judge for the State of Mississippi. About this time, late in the eighteenth century, numbers of people left the Carolinas to go to the country of "Natchez", which had been settled by the French in 1716 and named for the original owners, the Natchez Indians. To this region Gen. Willis was attracted and with his wife and ten children, his slaves, cattle, horses and other property, he left his home near Lumberton, NC, (1801) and journeyed to Natchez, Miss. The route they took was north from Lumberton, thence west across the Blue Ridge Mountains and Swannanoa Gap some 15 miles east of Asheville, thence west along the banks of the French Broad River, and the rivers emptying into the Cumberland and Tennessee. AT Muscle Shoals, General Willis built flat boats on which he embarked his family and his belongings. They stopped at Nashville for a season, then descended the Cumberland River to its junction with the Ohio, thence down the Ohio to the site of Cairo, thence down the Miss. River, arriving at Natchez on March 9, 1802. Gen. Willis died six weeks after reachng Natchez and was buried in the Catholic Cemetery, the only one there at the time. Later, his body was removed to the Confederate Memorial Park Cemetery. In November 1916, the US Government sent a marker for the DARs to erect to his memory. A committee from Boston brought the stone for his grave and saw that it was erected.