Wills Corner | Cherry Grove Road

Wills Corner

“There were many disputes between Isle of Wight and Nansemond Counties over their boundary lines.  In 1674 an act was passed by the House of Burgesses providing “Never-the-less, that the house and cleared grounds of Captain Thomas Godwin, who hath been an ancient inhabitant of Nanzemond Countie court, bee, remain counted, and deemed in the County of Nanzemond, anything in this act to the contrary notwithstanding…”  The home of Thomas Godwin I was at Wills Corner on the boundary line of Nansemond and Isle of Wight Counties.  His home was known as “Castle” and later as “Oldcastle”.  It is thought that his son Thomas II may have built the large house about 1710 and it stood until the early part of this century. (1)  “Apparently, the Godwins lived on both sides of the road between Wills Corner and Chuckatuck.  The farms known in the 20th century as the Percy Pitt place and the Mt. Ararat farm are on the west side of the road and there are several tracts on the east side of the road once owned by some of the Godwin family.” (2)   Thomas Godwin, II, son of Thomas I, married Martha Pitt Bridger who was the daughter of Joseph Bridger and Hester Pitt Bridger who lived on Brewer’s Creek, several miles from the Godwin home at Wills Corner.  Joseph Bridger and Hester Pitt Bridger’s father, Colonel Robert Pitt, were both Jamestown settlers. Thomas Godwin I and Joseph and Hester Pitt Bridger were the 7th great-grandparents of Mills E. Godwin, Jr. and Lynn Kirk Rose and the 8th great-grandparents of Leroy Pope, III.

1 & 2 – “Notes on the Mills Godwin Family of Isle of Wight County and Nansemond County, Virginia”  Mills E. Godwin, Jr. 1979, pp 5-7

There are two different thoughts on the location of Thomas Godwin’s house.  One thought is that it was located where Ann Gilliam Lovell now lives on Oliver Drive near the intersection with Route 10 in Isle of Wight County.  The other thought is that it was located on the rise of land east of Route 10 before crossing into Isle of Wight County from Nansemond County. The latter location was said to be the home of Lily Wills.  Because of the numerous Godwin homes in the area, it is impossible to know the true location.

Another plantation in the area, “Poplar Bridge” was the home of Thomas Godwin, III.  This land was on the west side of Cherry Grove Road and stretched from the Smithfield road to an area near “Cotton Plains”.  This land was passed down through Thomas III’s son, Jeremiah, to a succession of John Godwins. There were several gravestones on the property until recent years when the graves were moved to another family plot.

The following information is from Ann Lovell, a long-time resident of Wills Corner.

 “In 1642 Isle of Wight County was divided into two parishes, called Upper and Lower parishes.  The Pagan River was the general dividing line.  Inhabitants of Ragged Island and Terrascoe Neck won their petition to be changed from Nansemond to Isle of Wight County in 1656.  In 1674 the House of Burgesses passed an act settling the old boundary dispute between Nansemond and Isle of Wight.  An interesting stipulation in the act was that “…the house and cleared grounds of Captain Thomas Godwin, who has been an ancient inhabitant of Nansemond County be deemed in the county of Nansemond, anything in this act to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Mills E. Godwin, Jr. a descendant of this Captain Godwin wrote:  “The home of Thomas Godwin I was at Wills Corner, about one mile north of Chuckatuck on the boundary line of Nansemond and Isle of Wight counties.  It was known as “Castle” and later as “Oldcastle”. (1)

At one time it is also reported that there was a Christian Church located near here called Wills Chapel. (2)  Former members of Mill Swamp and Smithfield Baptist churches founded Whiteheads Grove Baptist Church in old Wills Chapel, a former Christian church.   The congregation moved to a new building on Joel Brock’s farm near Longview in 1844.  Under the leadership of the Reverend J. F. Deans of Smithfield Baptist, it moved to a new building at the present site in 1877.  The name was changed to honor John Whitehead, who had given the land. (3)

My dad, Barbee Gilliam, bought the store at Wills’ Corner in 1950 from the widow of a brother of Herbert Hall.  I remember going to the store with my dad right after he bought it and before he had opened it himself.  There was a pot-bellied stove in the store and since I had put my hand in the snow before going in I put my hand on the stove to dry my glove and learned that you should never touch a pot-bellied stove.

At the time he bought the store, the woods came right up to the back door.  He was also able to buy some of the Wills’ property right behind the store and bulldozed the woods behind the store.  He then added a section larger than the original building.  Originally there were stairs going up to the apartment over the store from inside the store and a 2-room apartment over the store.  There was a large porch across the whole front.  He enclosed the porch, and added two large bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.  The porch became our living room.  The old sitting room where the steps were became our kitchen.  The store itself doubled in size.  He sold everything, clothes, sewing supplies, medicine, wine, beer, groceries, that wonderful cheese that came in the round wooden boxes, ham, side meat, salt fish, and just about anything you could think of.

We lived in the apartment over the store and I learned to skate around the counters in the store when we weren’t busy.  It was the only pavement around.  At night the regulars would play checkers on a wooden checkerboard sitting on a wooden nail keg in the back section of the store.

On Sundays, everyone brought something to put in the Sunday Stew.  In the store, crops were planted and harvested, football and baseball games were bet on and discussed, jokes between this store and Gwaltney’s in Chuckatuck were played by the regulars, and something was going on all the time.  My dad kept a gun under the counter and never hesitated to pick up any troublemaker and throw them out of the store.  One time someone came in and tried to rob him, he picked up a cabbage and used his best baseball pitch to hit the would-be robber in the head with a cabbage.  It was the closest thing around.

In time he was able to purchase all four corners.  Cherry Grove Road decided to square up their corner and went through the middle of the lot across Route 10 from the store.  There was a house on that corner just about where the road is now that was torn down.  There was a building on the left corner of Oliver Drive that was torn down.  I used it for a barn and had 4 stables in it.  There was an old storehouse at the Nansemond County end of that lot.  It was used as a dwelling when my dad bought the store but was formally a store.  The story was that boys would stand in front of it and open the gate between the two counties since one had a fence law and the other didn’t.

Author’s Note: According to Mrs. Shirley Horne Wilson the store that Ray Gilliam ran before the depression was on the same corner as the store described above.  We now know that when the line was redrawn there was a gate between the two counties which is referenced by Ann Lovell in her notes.