Joseph Edward Willard

The son of prominent Washington hotelier and Union Army commissary major Joseph Clapp Willard (1820-1897) and former Confederate spy Antonia Ford, Joseph Willard had two brothers who died in infancy.

Willard served for eight years in the Virginia House of Delegates, prior to his election as the 19th Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. He held that office from 1902 through 1906, leaving after an unsuccessful run for Governor. The Virginia General Assembly then elected him a commissioner of the relatively new Virginia State Corporation Commission, where he served for four years.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Willard as the United States Ambassador to Spain. Upon the outbreak of World War I Willard was vacationing in the United States and returned to Europe aboard the USS Tennessee, although his only child, Belle, was sick with typhoid fever (she would recover).[1] Ambassador Willard held his position under successive presidents of both political parties until shortly before his death.

Willard and his wife, Belle Layton Wyatt (1869–1954), had one daughter Belle, (1892–1968) who later married Kermit Roosevelt.

• Willard Family Papers, Library of Congress