On the pages of Austin history, we stop at the year 1864 and find VIGILANTE JUSTICE ON 6TH STREET…….
Whether referring to Jon, Jay, William or Joe, if a Willis or a Willis relation was seen walking towards you on the downtown boardwalk, you stepped down and crossed to the other side of the street. They were a nasty bunch, those Willis boys. History clearly shows that the name Willis meant trouble. At the Austin History Center under the file’s nuisance, horse thief, drunk and murderer the name Willis reigns.
The seven Willis boys, their father and extended family grew up in the hills west of Austin, known today as Westlake Hills. No mention has ever been made of a mother.
The terrain west of the city was as rough as the people who lived there. The plant and animal life able to survive on the glen rose limestone offered little means to earn a living. The rocky earth could not support corn, cotton or cattle.
There was, though, an abundance of cedar trees. Many wealthy Austin families owned large tracts of land in the hills and employed the locals to cut and chop the cedar and haul it to their homes and businesses for fuel. This is how many hill people earned a living and they have since been referred to as ‘Cedar Choppers’.
Apparently the Willis’ believed they were too good for such work, in fact, they felt downright resentful. Why should they chop cedar for some rich city folk?
Money, though, continued to be a necessity and in 1864 they found that their funds were running low.
It was a frightening thing to imagine a Willis boy thinking, especially while drinking. But it happened, in the long dingy room in a saloon on 6th Street. There one sat… smoke, the setting sun and bad (?) lamps made it difficult for him to see. Even so, when Mr. William walked through the swinging doors it was crystal clear what he thought of the place and everybody in it. The manner in which he turned up his nose as his disapproving eyes scanned the saloon said it all. Catching sight of Mike, the stable hand, he immediately moved towards him, pulling him up by his arm and dragging him out the door as fast as he could.
As the swinging doors snapped back and forth this Willis was sitting alone at a small round table next to the back wall watching, hate his only emotion. Seething hate toward Mr. Williams and all his sort. Folk like the William’s just naturally irked any Willis. Hardworking, family oriented, just plain predictable. The concept grated on his rotten soul.
The William’s family, who lived just north of Austin, became the target of the most heinous crime any Willis had set his mind to. In those moments in that bar on 6th Street an idea was planted in the demented bitter mind of a man with no conscience. And he began to form a plan.
Dressing as best they could, what with red hair, to look like the local American Indians Willis brothers put this plan into action their minds set on easy money, and that easy money was in Mr. William’s cedar chest.
The plan was to head over to William’s homestead in the morning and make a surprise attack. The attack on the family was to look like an Indian attack. They would leave no survivors and therefore no witnesses.
Not included in the plan was the survival of an 8-year old girl.
Mr. Williams kept his money in the cedar chest at the foot of his bed and on the table next to his bed he kept his 6 shooter. Like many in those days, Mr. Williams believed he could protect his earnings better than any bank. Especially in a time when banks were robbed and the likes of the villains never known, and the money never found. Of course he could never have known that it would be in the day when he would need to defend his property and his family.
A lone girl who survived the massacre , her name has been lost in time, began her day much like any other as she would later tell the story.
On the tragic day when the attack ensued she and her brothers and sisters were in the yard, where most children spent much of their day. As the guns began firing and arrows penetrated the air she ran frightened into the low, dense shrubbery nearby. Though she could not be seen, she could see, and she watched as arrows and bullets took the lives of each one of her siblings. History does not tell us the number of children who met their demise that day, only that they all perished. Shot down in the bright morning light.
She watched the three red haired men, who rode wearing what she had seen American Indians wear. One surveyed the horrific scene from his saddle while another dismounted and entered into the house where she knew her mother to be. The child remembered hearing her mother scream and then the red haired man came down the porch stairs with a sack in his hand. Another went into the barn where the girl knew her father was working. No sound ever came from the barn. The attack was over in minutes. He was cut down in the morning while stitching a harness.
The band of renegade murders hastily left the Williams homestead, each one heading in a different direction. The young girl remained in her shelter until the friendly faces of the neighbors surfaced through the blur of tears that filled her eyes. In 1864 the act of deviance plotted by the Willis boys was above and beyond anything Austinites believed even a Willis was capable of performing.
The plan would have gone through without a hitch, if that one little 8-year-old girl had not lived, but live she did. She lived to tell the tale.
When she told her parent’s friends and neighbor’s what she had seen, above her head they shared knowing and revengeful glances.
Later she would testify in court that she saw 3 red headed men dressed like Indians and she would identify them as John, Jay and Joe Willis. Following a long and tedious hearing in the end the judge ruled “never in the history of the United States or Texas has a man been found guilty of a crime based on the testimony of a child, let alone hanged.”
In Austin Texas this would not change and the men were acquitted. A miss trail was declared, due to lack of evidence.
The judge was not quite sure what to do with the Willis brothers after the acquittal, so he ordered them to be held another night in the jail perhaps in part for their own safety. But well…
It was time. A town, a people, will only take so much before they say enough.
The Willis’ had gone too far this time.
A vigilante group formed and took the law into their own hands.
The cries, and worse, the silent torment of a devastated little girl, burned in the minds of the band of 20 or so men, who made their way north on Congress Avenue. Several more individuals moved from their stationary stance along the Avenue and joined the group.
The assembly stopped at the edge of the sloping hill that led to where the old capitol stood ( where you are standing right now) as unshakable and stately intent on their purpose.
Justice.
Three of the vigilantes separated themselves from the group and entered the old jailhouse at 11th and Congress Ave.
Inside they came face to face with two military men assigned to guard all the prisoners. The guards knew the intent of the men facing them in the cavernous stone structure.
“You can step aside, and let us round up the Willis boys, or you can get hurt.”
The guards chose to step aside and the Willis ‘s were escorted out the door and onto Congress Avenue, where their hands were forcibly tied behind their backs.
Did the Willis boys know what their fate was to be, as they were led south down Congress Avenue?
One would imagine that they did, and on their eleven block journey from the jail to their final destination, there wasn’t much they had to say. The hate and conviction in the eyes of the citizens surrounding them, said it all.
The group turned east on 6th Street, a thriving strip of local commerce. That night, though, it was unusually quiet. The hour was late, no sound came from the many saloons and businesses that lined this center of Austin. The air was weighted with anticipation. There was going to be a hanging and if anybody dared to try and stop it, they had better be prepared to put their life behind their opinion.
Whispers about the hanging had spread through the city like consumption on a cattle trail, but apparently nobody was willing to take any risk on the Willis boy’s behalf.
100 yards past Red River there was an open commons owned by John Connor. A grove of large oaks grew on his land. It was on this shaded field where the group finally stopped. (Today 6th Street and Sabine. A location where most businesses never last very long).
Mounted men dismounted, one person began to unroll the rope while others held the now struggling men. Lookouts were placed just outside the circle of activity and patrolled with rifles.
One end of the rope was thrown over a thick live oak limb which extended straight out from it’s trunk and a noose tied. The first and youngest of the boys was led to the dangling loop and it was firmly placed around his throat.
Two of the strongest men took hold of the other side of the rope and heaved and pulled and held on until the hanging body had no more breath.
When performing a dirty hanging, which this was, the condemned person didn’t usually enjoy the quick death that a professional hanging provided. In this case, the hanging of the Willis boys, they died slow, prolonged painful suffocating deaths.
