Located in the southeast corner of Cortland County, Willet was formed in 1818 from the original township of Cincinnatus. It was named after revolutionary war veteran Colonel Marinus Willet, who drew up Lot 88 in the Military Tract of Cincinnatus although never came to settle the land. In 1885, H.P. Smith describes the Willet hamlet as consisting of two churches, four stores, a hotel, two mills, several shops, and about twenty dwellings. By 2018 the Methodist Church was closed, the hotel burnt down, and the town very much changed. There is local pride in the Willet Ball Park, which was created around 1920 for use by the local school district, with the grandstand built in 1947. While the school in Willet no longer remains, the park is still used for soccer and baseball games for the Cincinnatus Little League, and older residents can recall when men on the town teams donned their uniforms and took to the field on summer evenings.