George Ingraham Willis (1912-1988) was a business executive with an interest in genealogy. He was born in Flushing, New York, the son of William Willis and Mary Macdonald Ingraham. The family's primary residence was in Queens and they owned a summer home in Wainscott, Long Island. George's father, who died when George was 18, worked for the family-owned business, W.P. Willis & Co, a wool and fabric importer in Manhattan, which was founded by George's grandfather, William P. Willis. George attended the Lenox School, an all-male secondary school, in Lenox, Massachusetts and then Williams College, where he was a member of the college's Musical Society. He graduated from Williams in 1935, and then attended graduate school at Exeter College, Oxford for two years.
When George returned from Oxford in 1937, he took a position at the Lenox School, where he taught until 1942. He married Margaret Ethel Pownall in 1939, and they had a son, William Pownall Willis, the following year. In 1942, George took a job in the corporate office of United Aircraft Corporation, and he and his family moved to West Hartford, Connecticut where the company's headquarters were located. His wife gave birth to a second son, Peter Willis, in 1944. After the move to Connecticut, George became involved with the Simsbury Simply Light Opera Company, one of the longest-running non-profit light opera companies in the country. He worked for United Aircraft until 1974, and upon his retirement in that year, began to pursue genealogical research full-time.
George and his wife made three trips to England between 1982 and 1986 to research the origins of his English ancestor, Henry Willis, one of the first Quakers to emigrate from England and settle in Long Island. The results of his research were published as "The English Origins of Henry Willis of Westbury, Long Island," the front-page article in the April 1987 issue of the New York Genealogical and Bibliographical Record . The primary focus of his investigations remained the Willis line, but he also conducted substantive research on the allied Ingraham, Davenport, and Davis families. In addition, George was also interested in the families of women who married Willis men, such as the Crowell, Ingraham, Ross and Pownall families.
From the guide to the George Ingraham Willis genealogical research papers, 1807-1988, 1930-1944, 1979-1988, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)
