Not far from the Meadowbrook Cemetery, this marker points out the former residence of one local.
The marker reads, "Founder of Lumberton, captain in Revolution, later brigadier general; member of legislature, conventions of 1788, '89. Plantation was here." It is marker number I-38 and it was erected in 1953 by the North Carolina Archives, Conservation and Highway Departments.
John Willis was born in 1756 on Saddletree Swamp, making him one of the first native-born sons of the area that would become Robeson County. He expanded his family's holdings after the war years and became the region's largest landowner, which positioned him to play a central role in the creation of Robeson County in 1787. That same year he donated 170 acres of his Red Bluff Plantation for the new county seat, a settlement he named Lumberton for the nearby Lumber River. The town received legislative recognition in 1788 and was later incorporated in 1852. Willis went on to represent the county in both legislative chambers, married Asenath Barnes in 1779, fathered eight children, and died in Natchez on April 22, 1802.
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