[1] He was the son of an Englishman, Agerton Willis,[1] and a Cherokee slave making him born into slavery, his father Agerton granted Joseph freedom in his will upon his death however some family members denied Joseph his freedom, He was a "Marion Men" fighting during the Revolutionary War under General Francis Marion "The Swamp Fox" who is considered the "father of American guerrilla warfare".
Thus The Willis family has deep roots in the founding of America and of early Baptist Church and was a part of the spiritual "Great Awakening" in the 1800s.
His first church mission failed, but he redoubled his efforts and was rewarded with a successful congregation in Opelousas, the seat of St. Landry Parish.
He is also considered to be the "Father of the Red Bones," a tribe of mixed-blood Native Americans most of the Cherokee and Lumbee.
It has been said that when Reverend Joseph Willis died, three years later a large number of mulatto, or mixed, Native Americans traveled to pay their last respects to a great man considered to this day to be "the first to preach a Baptist sermon west of the Mississippi."