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Willis W. Duke was born on September 14, 1818 in Putnam County, the son of John M. Duke and Charity Waldrop (who died about 1822). After his father's remarriage in 1824, the family moved by 1830 to Troup County on the western Georgia frontier. There Willis' father was among the founding trustees (and first minister) of Concord Primitive Baptist Church formed in 1833, along with neighbor Abraham Hagler, the father of Willis' future wife Mary. Based on his later pension application (rejected for lack of original muster rolls), Willis Duke enlisted in LaGrange on June 1, 1836 for a 6-month tour as a private in Captain "Bird" Colverson's company of Georgia volunteers for the Indian Wars, in Colonel J.C. Shepard's regiment, and was discharged at Columbus on December 1, 1836. See Willis Duke's Indian War pension application, rejected on account of missing muster rolls.
Although Willis subsequently moved into Chambers County, Alabama with his father and step-mother about 1837, on February 8, 1842 Willis returned to Troup County to marry Mary Ann Hagler (born 1821), daughter of Abraham and Mary Hagler. Willis and Mary Duke settled in neighboring Heard County and raised a large family there in the Franklin District. After the death of his eldest son on the Confederate battlefront, Willis enlisted in September 1863 (at the age of 45) in Company K of the 34th Regiment of Georgia Volunteers, serving until his discharge at the end of the war. Willis and Mary eventually moved to Winston County, Alabama after 1880. Some time after Mary's death there on October 12, 1895, Willis moved back to Heard County to live with his son Richard, where he received an indigent pension as a Confederate veteran. Willis Duke died there on May 13, 1912, and is buried in Heard County. See transcript of Willis' Civil War pension application, and see photograph of Willis Duke's headstone and cemetery.
Children of Willis W. Duke and Mary Ann Hagler
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