PART III JOSEPH WILLIS The Apostle to the Opelousas By Randy Willis . www.randywillis.org The Barefoot Preacher Joseph then moved farther west, to Ville Platte, Louisiana. There is an interesting story that Pastor J. D. Scott of Alexandria was told in 1945 by a very elderly lady, Grandma DeVille from Bayou Chicot, Louisiana, in the presence of Pastor Theo Cormier. Theo Cormier interpreted her French. She was old enough to remember a man by the name of John Shaw who previously had been a schoolteacher and had a private school in Ville Platte. It was to Ville Platte that Joseph fled after being run out of Vermillion for preaching the Gospel. Here he met John Shaw. After discovering that Joseph was a Baptist preacher, John invited him into his home and made his school available for Joseph's preaching. This began the first meetings held on a regular basis by a Baptist preacher west of the Mississippi, the year was 1805. He was also the first resident pastor in Louisiana. It was not long before he met opposition from the Catholics and both his and his family's lives were threatened. Joseph told the story in later years that he once had to flee, barefooted, from the "mob of Catholics" who were after him in the middle of the night. John Shaw and Joseph Willis were told to leave or else. They loaded their belongings and families onto a wagon and headed to Texas. But when they got as far as Bayou Chicot, Joseph's conscience reminded him that he was a missionary called by God. He told Mr. Shaw that he would have to get off, for God had sent him there to do missionary work and he would be violating what he knew to be the will of God. He was not going to run any more. The family lived there for approximately the next 25-years. Joseph bought property, farmed, raised a family and preached Jesus. Mr. Shaw went on to Texas; when they got to Burr's Ferry, near present-day Toledo Bend, they camped because the Sabine River was up. One of his two children died there and was buried on the banks of the Sabine. His wife later died in Texas. Shaw then returned to Bayou Chicot and remarried. Joseph settled at Bayou Chicot in 1805. The next year the Mississippi Baptist Association was organized. Though a licensed minister, a church had never ordained him. It was his belief that the church should ordain him and that such should be done too give him the authority too organize a church. Some have questioned this and have asked why he did not just organize one anyway without his ordination. The answer is clear that he felt that to do so was wrong. He had learned in North Carolina the hard way to dot every "i" and cross every "t" and later he learned the value of being a strong member of the Bethel Association in South Carolina. He knew well the importance of banding together with other believers, but there had been no need for ordination before because the population at that time in Louisiana was very sparse. He had only six members in 1812 when he organized Calvary Baptist Church. He had lived there for seven-years already. Before that, his ministry was on a one-on-one or one-on-two basis. But now, Louisiana was growing at a rapid pace. In 1812 the state population was slightly over 80,000. Eight-years later it was over 200,000, yet this section of the state was still thinly populated with churches twenty to fifty-miles apart and having little communication with each other. The Fiery Furnace In 1810 Joseph left for Mississippi to be ordained. His son, Joseph, Jr., would later often speak of he and his father crossing the Mississippi River at Natchez and how dangerous it could be. It was also said that Joseph once crossed the mighty river riding a mule in order to take a short cut and save time. After reaching Mississippi, once again prejudice raised its ugly head. Joseph took his letter to a local church stating that he was a member in good standing while in South Carolina. Such was the custom then as now amongst Baptists to transfer church membership by a letter. But the church to which he gave his letter objected to his ordination "lest the cause of Christ should suffer reproach from the humble social position of his servant." Paxton states: "Such obstacles would have daunted the zeal of any man engaged in a less holy cause." The "humble social position" of Joseph was certainly not his wealth but the fact that his skin was swarthy. I’m often reminded when I think of Joseph Willis at this point in his life of the statement that: "the test of a man’s character is what it takes to discourage him." Once again we see a very important personality trait of Joseph's that is recorded over and over again. He was long-suffering and willing to pay whatever price necessary to proclaim the Gospel. After being betrayed by family, losing two wives and now being rejected by his own denomination he never became embittered. In Joseph’s mind and heart, no price is too high for the cause of Christ. His focus is not on the fiery furnace of life but on the fourth Man in the fire with him. He knew the safest place in life to be is in the fiery furnace because that is where the fourth Man (Christ) is. Paxton wrote of Joseph’s heart: "…he was a simple-hearted Christian, glowing with the love of Jesus and an effective speaker." His youngest son Aimuewell said before his own death in 1937 "the secret of his father's success was personal work." He said that as a boy he saw his father go to a man in the field, hold his hand and then witness to him until he surrendered to Christ. Today, many generations later, his influence can still be seen. One grandchild said he would be reading the Bible and talking to them. A few of them would slip away and he would say "children you can slip away from me, but not from God." According to Paxton: "Joseph was never ‘daunted’ for his was a high calling, a single-mindedness of purpose." Rev. Joseph Willis & The Churches After the rejection in Mississippi, he was advised by a friendly minister to obtain a recommendation from the people he worked among. This he did and presented it to the Mississippi Association. The association accepted the recommendation, ordained Joseph, and constituted a church called Calvary at Bayou Chicot on November 13, 1812. Calvary Baptist Church is still active today. Louisiana had been a state barely seven-months and was in a state of turmoil. Great Britain did not consider the Louisiana Purchase legally valid and Congress had declared war on Great Britain the past June; The War of 1812. Just a month and a day earlier on the Boque Chitto River in what is now Washington Parish, Half Moon Bluff Baptist Church was organized. Located approximately eight-miles from the Mississippi border, Half Moon Bluff was the first Baptist Church organized in what is now Louisiana but was east of the Mississippi River. Some fifteen to twenty-miles southwest of Half Moon Bluff Church, Mount Nebo Baptist Church was organized on January 31, 1813. Half Moon Bluff is extinct but Mount Nebo is still active. The Methodists established a church even before these dates near Branch, Louisiana, but the first non-Catholic church in Louisiana was Christ Church in New Orleans. Its’ first service was held November 17, 1805, in the Cabildo, and it was predominantly Episcopal. Paxton wrote "The zeal of Father Willis, as he came to be called by the affectionate people among whom he labored, could not be bounded by the narrow limits of his own home, but he traveled far and wide." Once when he was traveling and preaching, he stayed at an Inn. There were several other men staying there. One of these men was sick and Joseph read the Bible to him, prayed with him and witnessed to him about Christ. The next morning all of the men were gone very early except the man who was sick. He told Joseph that the night before he had overheard the men talking about Joseph and that they had gone ahead to ambush him. He told him about another road too take and Joseph’s life was spared. Those who loved him called Joseph Willis the "Apostle to the Opelousas" and "Father Willis." According to family tradition, strong determination and profound faith were his shields. He would often work barefooted, walking great distances too visit and preach to small groups. He rode logs in order to cross streams or travel downstream. He would sometimes return home from a mission tour as late as one o'clock in the morning and awaken his wife to prepare clothes that he might leave again a few hours later. By 1818, when Joseph and others founded the Louisiana Baptist Association at Cheneyville, he had been instrumental in founding all five charter member churches. They were Calvary, 1812; Beulah, 1816; Vermillion, 1817; Aimwell, 1817 (also called Debourn); and Plaquemine, 1817. Aimwell was about five-miles southeast of Oberlin, Beulah at Cheneyville, Calvary at Bayou Chicot, Vermillion at Lafayette, and Plaquemine near Branch. In 1824 he helped establish Zion Hill Church at Beaver Dam along with William Wilbourn and Isham Nettles. He went "far and wide" establishing a church October 21, 1827, just seventeen-miles from Orange, Texas, and the Texas State line near Edgerly, Louisiana named Antioch Primitive Baptist Church. Joseph kept a diary. These notes were arranged in 1841 by W. P. Ford and copied by Paxton in 1858. Paxton admits most of his facts concerning Central Louisiana Baptists are from this manuscript and Louisiana Association Minutes. This manuscript is lost today. Mr. Ford also made remarks in this manuscript. One of Ford's observations made in 1834 is recorded by Paxton and is very revealing concerning Joseph: "Nearly all the churches now left in the association were gathered either directly or indirectly by the labors of Mr. Willis. Mr. Ford remarks of this effort: ‘It was truly affecting to hear him speak of them as his children; and with all the affection of a father allude to some schisms and divisions that had arisen in the past and to warn them against the occurrence of anything of the kind in the future. But when he spoke of the fact that two or three of them had already become extinct, his voice failed and he was compelled to give utterance to his feelings by his tears; and surely the heart must have been hard that could not be melted by the manifestation of so much affection, for he wept not alone." No church ever split while Joseph was its pastor. Baptist historian John T. Christian remarks in his book "A History of Baptist of Louisiana" (1923): "It must steadily be borne in mind that in no other state of the Union have Baptists been compelled to face such overwhelming odds; and such long and sustained opposition...The wonder is not that at first the Baptists made slow progress, but that they made any at all." The Opelousas Court House records that Joseph first bought land in Bayou Chicot in 1805. Here, in Bayou Chicot, on June 29, 1809, he sold a slave to Hilaire Bordelon for $500. Again in June of 1810, he sold another slave for $480 to Godefrey Soileau. On January 5, 1816 he sold a slave for $200 to Cesar Hanchett with the provision that this slave would be freed at the age of 32. On March 10, 1818, Joseph sold 411 acres for $2,000 to John Montgomery "in the neighborhood of Bayou Chicot." The deed reveals that Joseph had originally purchased this land from John Haye on September 21, 1809. This property had a great deal of improvements on it. On the same day Joseph bought a slave from John Montgomery for $800. Other deeds refer to property that Joseph bought while there, such as 148 acres he sold for $351 to James Murdock on January 6, 1824. This land was part of a tract originally purchased by Joseph from Silas Fletcher on April 20, 1818. He sold the balance of these lands to Thomas Insall on October 31, 1827, for $500. Joseph’s last sale at Bayou Chicot was the sale of three slaves on August 17, 1829, to James Groves for $1,500. Thomas Insall paid off a note he owed Joseph on October 11, 1833. These are but a few of Joseph's business transactions while at Bayou Chicot. They confirm religion historian Benedict's statement, in 1813, that Joseph "spent a large fortune while engaged in the ministry" for all of this money was gone in his later years. It was at Bayou Chicot that most of his children were born. Miss. Mabel Thompson, of Ville Platte, has in her possession the diary of her great-grandfather who was the schoolteacher in that area. In his diary he listed the patrons of the children who attended school. Joseph Willis is listed as a patron on July 12, 1814. According to respected Bayou Chicot historian Mabel Thompson. "Chicot’s chief attraction was it had an abundance of natural resources, such as timber, good water, wild game, good soil and friendly Indians…Chicot became a trading center for a large territory extending as far West as the Sabine River, serving Indians, trappers, Frontiersmen, homesteaders, as well as plantation owners." CONTINUED SEE PART IV