Jockis manor and industry
Von Willebrand had become acquainted with the Tammela parish in southwestern Tavastia, his wife's home district, and had himself lived there by the mid-1770s at the latest. He had managed his uncle's manor of Jockis, and likely performed cavalry service on the manor's behalf. In the early 1780s he purchased Viksberg farm in Hautakorva, Tammela, and in 1791 the large Jockis manor itself. The estate became so extensive – running to thousands of hectares – that people colloquially began speaking of the "Jockis county".
Once settled in Finland, von Willebrand set about renovating Jockis. Within two decades the formerly modest country estate became one of Finland's most stately manors and one of the country's largest industrial centres. Von Willebrand renewed the entire building stock of the estate. Construction of the main building, designed by C.C. Gjörwell, began in 1794. When completed, the palace-like brick structure measured 45 metres in length and contained 30 rooms. It is regarded as Finland's first manor house in the neoclassical style and served as a model for several other manors.
After completing the main building, von Willebrand had an even larger brick cattle barn erected and a new stone granary built. A three-storey timber grain storehouse with an impressive clock tower dates from around 1808. In addition to the new buildings, he laid out an extensive garden and a large English-style park. Greenhouses were already a rarity in Finland, and von Willebrand further distinguished himself by modelling his orangery on that at Versailles.
Von Willebrand was also active in the sawmill industry. As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century there had been a single-blade water-powered sawmill on the Jockis estate. During the first half of the eighteenth century, modern Dutch water-powered sawmills with around ten blades had begun to appear along the Finnish south coast, and the multi-blade sawmill built at Jockis in the early 1750s was among the first of its kind in Tavastia. Von Willebrand expanded and improved the estate's sawmill operations in the 1790s. He was also a part-owner of several other sawmills in southwestern Tavastia, and in Finland Proper he owned the Koski sawmill.
Von Willebrand was also active in the textile industry. In 1796 he founded a cloth factory at Jockis – despite the economic policy of the time prohibiting manufactures in rural areas. He built the factory first and applied for permission afterwards; thanks to his connections he obtained a licence in 1797, by which time production was already in full swing. The factory soon grew into Finland's largest and most modern of its kind. Through his contacts he secured large orders from the army, and the manufactory sourced raw materials partly from the estate's large sheep farm. In 1800 new English carding and spinning machines powered by water were acquired, marking a significant step towards industrial production in Finnish textile manufacturing. Von Willebrand obtained civic rights in Åbo and opened a shop in the city, and the Jockis cloth factory enjoyed great success under his direction.
In 1804 von Willebrand had an ironworks built at the Jockis rapids. Pig iron was imported from central Sweden and refined into wrought iron on site, while charcoal was sourced from the estate's own forests.
Under von Willebrand's direction Jockis became the industrial centre of Tavastia, as in addition to the sawmills and the iron and cloth factories, a large brickworks and a distillery were also established on the estate. Most of the brickworks' output went to the estate's own building projects, while a large share of the spirits was transported to Åbo. At the estate's rapids stood a large watermill where, in addition to ordinary grain, wheat and fine rye flour were milled for the use of the upper classes.
Outside Jockis, von Willebrand was a part-owner of the Åbo New Tobacco Factory, founded at the time of his move to Finland. The factory was originally located in Nådendal but moved to Åbo in 1795. In competition with two older tobacco factories it never managed to grow significantly, particularly as the supply of foreign raw materials began to run short as a result of the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century.
In the Gustavian Finland of the late eighteenth century, von Willebrand was among the most ardent advocates of agricultural reform. He was the first chairman of the Finnish Husbandry Society (Finska hushållningssällskapet), founded in 1797. When no other member of the society was willing to try building clay houses in Finland, he had several such structures erected at Jockis.
