Mules for Sale near Willis, TX

About Willis, TX

Before the founding of Willis, most residents in the area lived in a settlement known as Danville, formed four miles west of present-day New Waverly in the 1830s. A few Danville residents in the 1850s settled south of Danville in what is now Willis. Several of these early Danville residents were large slave plantation owners. About 600 of the estimated 1,000 early Danville residents in the 1850s were slaves. After the Civil War, many recently freed slaves lived in the Willis area, establishing Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church in 1867, the oldest church in Willis.