From the Blue Ridges to the Sandhills: The History of 4 North Carolina Families

The Family of
Robert (Bob) Oakley
and Jane Willey

Robert T. (Bob) Oakley was the second child of James L. Oakley and Ann (Annie) Oakley. He was born in North Carolina, probably in Rockingham County. Bob Oakley married Margaret Jane Willey on February 2, 1878 in Franklin Township in Surry. The census lists him as a farmer. He died of rhematism on December 23, 1919 and was buried at New Life Baptist Church in the Pine Ridge community of Surry County.

Margaret Jane Willey (photograph above) was born October 10, 1853 or 1858, depending on the record. Her parents were Ambrose Willey (1821-ca.1910) of Ashe County and Mary Andrews, (ca.1824-ca.1895) daughter of Alfred and Patsy Hatfield Andrews. Ambrose was the son of Andrew Willey (ca. 1792-1864) and Mary Wolfe, who were married around 1814. More information about Jane Willey's family can be found here.

At the time of the 1920 census, after Bob's death, Jane lived in Franklin Township in Surry County, in the Lowgap area, with her son Charlie, and she farmed for a living. Her grandchildren said that she also gathered and sold wild plants, such as galax and creeping cedar. A merchant in Lowgap named Truman N. Woodruff sold galax leaves to florists in New York City, starting in 1907. He hired local women to pick the galax, sort it, and bundle it for shipping. A woman could pick as many as 10,000 leaves in a day. The business lasted until artificial greenery took the place of real leaves, at least into the 1920's.

Jane died February 19, 1934 and was buried beside her husband at New Life.

Robert Oakley and Jane Willey had six sons:

1. George Washington Oakley was born January 1, 1879 in Surry County. He married Etta May Sparks February 4, 1900, and they had three children. He was a Primitive Baptist elder.

George Oakley was among the 35 charter members of Calvary Baptist in Toast in 1913, along with his daughter, Bessie Oakley. He was the first pastor of Pinnacle View Baptist Church, near Pilot Mountain, from 1930-1935. Between about 1922 and 1929, he also served Ivy Green, on Old Low Gap Road, and was pastor sometime before 1956 of New Life Baptist, where his parents and two of his brothers are buried. He was also pastor for five years of Hills Grove Baptist on Pilot Power Dam Rd.

When George died, on March 28, 1957, his home was in Baywood, Virginia. He was buried at Pleasant Home Union Regular Baptist Church near Ennice, North Carolina.

Bessie D. Oakley was born December 17, 1900. She married Josh Ayers and had three children. She died October 14, 1940 and was buried near her parents at Pleasant Home.

George and Etta's son James Earl Oakley was a farmer at Low Gap. He was born April 20, 1903. He married Annie Faye Rutherford around 1937 and had at least one child. He died August 19, 1985. He was buried at Liberty Union Baptist Church in Low Gap, N. C.

Thelma Oakley, born June 11, 1911, married Clifford Mack Stone in 1927 and had three children. She passed away May 12, 2001.

2. James Ambrose (Jim) Oakley, the second son of Bob and Jane Oakley, was born June 1, 1880. On August 11, 1907, he married Etta B. Isaacs, born July 14, 1877, the daughter of Elisha and Elizabeth Caroline Calloway Isaacs. (Jim and Etta are shown in the photograph at right, about 1942.) They lived and farmed in Low Gap, where Jim ran a saw mill.

Their son Hubert John Oakley was born May 23, 1908. He married Dorothy Elizabeth Hodges, daughter of Luther and Lena Hodges, on March 14, 1936 and had ten children. Hubert passed away September 6, 1952.

Jim and Etta also had a daughter, Mabel, (Nov. 26, 1911-Oct. 20, 1998) who married W. Corbett Bottomley in 1928. They had several children.

Etta died March 4, 1951, and Jim, April 25, 1960. They and their children and several grandchildren are buried at Liberty Union Baptist Church in Low Gap.

3. William Edgar (Ed) Oakley (on right in photograph) was born March 27, 1889 and died June 7, 1956. He was born in Surry County. He married Maggie J. Snow about 1911, and they had one daughter, Reba Grace Oakley. They lived at Round Peak. Maggie Snow died March 20, 1915, of tuberculosis. She was buried at Franklin Primitive Baptist Church in Surry County, near her parents, Tyson W. and Bettie Golding Snow.

Ed married Jessie Fannie Johnson on December 24, 1917. They had eight children. Ed worked in a furniture factory in Mount Airy and lived on Franklin Road in Toast until about 1936, when he moved his family to Cameron, N.C., in Moore County. He farmed tobacco until his death. At that time he lived next to the church on Rocky Fork Church Road in Lee County. More about Ed and Fannie and their children can be learned by clicking on Ed's name, above. By clicking on Fannie's name, you can learn about her parents, Lindsay and Martha Johnson, and their family.

4. Thomas Claude Oakley was born in 1891 and farmed in the Franklin Township of Surry County. He married Effie Isaacs, born in 1895 in Alleghany County to John and Laura McCann Isaacs. They farmed and lived in the Franklin Township in Surry County. Claude died in 1960 and Effie, in September of 1975. They were buried at New Life Baptist Church. Their son, Arnold Lee Oakley (January 30, 1919-July 26, 1977,) is also buried at New Life. He was married to Mary Retha Riggins in 1941, and to Sadie Juanita Bowman in 1961.

5. Robert Oscar Oakley (photograph above, man on left) was born October 12, 1893. On August 20, 1916, in Surry County, he married Ida Doby, born May 1, 1894 to Jim and Lucy Doby. Oscar and Ida moved to the Moore/Lee County area to farm, around the same time as Ed and Fannie. They had a son and a daughter.

Mack Samuel Oakley was born June 15, 1917, and married Gladys Lucille Blakely of Lee County in 1935. They had seven children. He passed away February 26, 1989, in Moore County, and she died September 20, 1990.

Ruby Oakley was born November 4, 1918. She married Harvey Edwards in 1935 in Lee County, and had at least five children. She died January 2, 1981, and he, on January 1, 1991. Their grave is near her parents' at Rocky Fork Christian Church in Lee County.

Oscar died August 4, 1943, and Ida passed away January 27, 1983.

6. Charles R. (Charlie) Oakley was born May 29, 1895. On August 12, 1927, he married Dulcie L. Spiers, daughter of Lloyd and Susan Spiers, in Dobson. Charlie worked at a grist mill in Surry County and had at least seven children. Later, he lived in Galax, Virginia. He died December 26, 1955 and was buried at New Life Baptist Church.

From the Blue Ridges to the Sandhills: The History of 4 NC Families/Robert Oakley and Jane Willey Family
© 2001 by Glenda Alexander, updated November 2007        Standard copyright restrictions apply.