Willis, Thomas Middlebrook

On his 1878 scouting trip Willis spent several weeks at the ranch of James Couts and John Simpson, the Hashknife partners and old friends of his father. His family had settled in Denton County in 1872. Willis took his law degree from Cumberland University on January 18, 1883, the year Abilene became county seat, and opened an office on the west side of Chestnut Street. In 1885 he led the new literary and debating society. He and Sallie married at First Presbyterian Church and built a house at South Seventh and Poplar.

What the plaque says

(June 27, 1859 - November 27, 1937) Born in Bainbridge, Georgia, Thomas Middlebrook Willis was an important early leader in Abilene. Willis moved to Waco, Texas with his parents, Dr. Thomas L. and Mrs. Letitia Willis, in 1866. T.M. Willis first came to this area in 1878 to investigate range possibilities. In 1883, after graduating from the law school of Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, he moved here and established a practice. In 1886, Willis married Abilene resident Sallie Parker (1865-1954); the couple had eight children. Also in 1886, he was elected City Attorney. Willis later also served as City Judge. In 1937, the Abilene Reporter-News honored him, among others, as one of the city's founders. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.6 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 13 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 13 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 18 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Claiborne Walker Merchant — steps away
• James Winford Hunt — steps away
• Morgan Jones — 0.3 mi
• Abilene Reporter-News — 0.8 mi