Joseph Edward Willard was born on May 1, 1865 in Washington, D. C. , the ninth in line of descent from Simon Willard, one of the founders of Concord, Massachussets. His father was Joseph Clapp Willard, an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War, and his mother Antonia J. (Ford) Willard, of Fairfax Court House, Va. , who was commissioned by Gen. J. E. B. Stuart as honorary aide-de-camp on October 7, 1861, and was captured as a Confederate spy on March 16, 1863.
The boy was graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1886, studied law for a few weeks at the University of Virginia.
He practised at the Richmond bar with such financial success that he was sometimes spoken of as the richest man in Virginia. He may also have inherited wealth from his father who was at one time owner of the Willard Hotel in Washington. The Spanish-American War gave him a state-wide reputation. Mustered in at Richmond, Va. , on May 23, 1898, as captain in the 3rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry, he passed the summer months recruiting a volunteer regiment in Fairfax County. On November 21 of the same year he was commissioned captain and assistant quartermaster in United States Volunteers, and he was discharged on April 2, 1899. From December 7, 1898, to Feburary 11, 1899, he was on duty as acting aide-de-camp to Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, and as assistant quartermaster, VII Army Corps, at Camp Columbia, near Habana, Cuba. His political career commenced in 1893 with his election, as a Democrat, to the Virginia House of Delegates to represent Fairfax County, which was for many years his home. After eight years in the House he was elected in 1901 lieutenant-governor under Gov. Andrew J. Montague. In 1905 he contested the Democratic nomination for governor with Claude A. Swanson and William H. Mann, and, emerging in third place, obtained appointment as a state corporation commissioner, 1906-1910. Appointed on July 28, 1913, minister to Spain, he was the last of the long line of American ministers to Spain and the first American ambassador to that country, September 10, 1913, to June 28, 1921. Although he was absent from Madrid during the most trying days of early August 1914 he returned late that month to face the difficult tasks arising from the war. In December he was instructed to reject the Spanish proposal that Spain and the United States cooperate in offering mediation to the belligerents. Again in August 1916 it was necessary for him to inform the Spanish Government of President Wilson's decision not to cooperate with the Spanish King in offering good offices to the belligerents. Somewhat irritated at Wilson's policy of acting without consultation, the Spanish Government in its turn rejected Willard's invitation to lend its support to the President's peace proposals of December 18, 1916. The two governments also failed to cooperate in protesting Germany's submarine policy. After the United States became a belligerent Willard conducted the negotiations that led to the arrangement of March 7, 1918, providing for the exportation from the United States of commodities needed by Spain and the sale by Spain of supplies needed for the American troops in Europe. In 1921 Willard returned to his law practice in the United States. He had business interests in Richmond and Washington, where he was occupied in part with the affairs of his son-in-law, Kermit Roosevelt, and in New York City, where he was living at the time of his death.
On September 16, 1891, he married Belle Layton Wyatt of Baltimore by whom he had two children.
