Willis Whitaker, Jr., son
of Willis Whitaker and Sarah Williams, was born in Kershaw Co.,
SC. He m. 1st Sarah Harrison Ross Moores, 31 Jul 1833, in SC,
daughter of Charles Moores and Mary Harrison of Fairfield Dist.,
SC. They removed to Texas with the Moores. He m. 2nd her sister,
Elizabeth Harrison Moores, 27 Jul 1844, prob. in TX, widow of
James Thomas Rosborough. Whitaker had six children by his 1st
wife, five children by his 2nd wife, and four stepchildren by
her 1st marriage.
He was a large slave holder,
inherited slaves from mother, had original plantation on Red
River, Bowie Co., and large plantation "Cedar Grove"
halfway between Jefferson and Linden, TX.
The New Handbook of Texas
says of him, "WHITAKER, WILLIS, SR. (ca. 1799-?). Willis
Whitaker, Sr., early Cass County settler and one of the largest
slaveholders in Texas on the eve of the Civil War, was born about
1799 in South Carolina. He immigrated to Texas in May 1840 and
settled in what is now Cass County, where he received a 640-acre
grant in November 1841. He and his wife, Sarah, whom he married
on September 19, 1843, had several children, among them Benjamin
F. Whitaker, who later served as a member of the Texas Senate.
Whitaker gradually added to his landholdings and by 1860 had
1,000 improved acres and a net worth of $100,400. He also owned
102 slaves and was thus one of the 100 largest slaveholders in
the state at the time. His plantation's extensive facilities
included brick slave quarters that faced a street and a brick
jail with separate cells for men and women. In 1859 Whitaker's
plantation produced more rye than any other in the state, 500
bushels. In 1860 it produced 2,000 bushels of corn and 150 bales
of cotton. Whitaker evidently died around the time of the Civil
War and was buried in Old Harrison Chapel Cemetery near Redwater
in Bowie County.
- BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- Randolph B. Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
- Abigail Curlee Holbrook,
"A Glimpse of Life on Antebellum Slave Plantations in Texas,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 76 (Apr 1973).
- Ralph A. Wooster, "Wealthy
Texans, 1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 71 (Oct
1967).
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