William H. Wills Papers, 1712-1993 (bulk 1803-1882)

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Summary

Creator:
Wills, William H. (William Henry), 1809-1889.
Abstract:

The papers of William H. Wills, a white general merchant, Methodist Protestant minister, and cotton plantation owner, document the lives of the white plantation-owning Wills, Norman, Swain, Swift, Cotten, and Snell families and the people enslaved by them in Halifax County, N.C., Washington County, N.C., Edgecombe County, N.C., Jackson County, Fla., and Leon County, Fla. Known plantations include Greenwood Plantation, Spring Grove Plantation, and Strawberry Hill Plantation in Halifax County, N.C., and Cotton Land in Leon County, Fla. The collection includes correspondence and other papers documenting enslavement in North Carolina and Florida, itinerant ministers of the Methodist Protestant church in North Carolina and church administration between the 1840s and 1890s. Information appears on circuit travels, camp meetings, local churches, finances, arbitration and trials, divided opinions regarding slavery within the Methodist Protestant denomination, and local, state, district, and national church administration. Other topics include the lives of the white families; boarding school life; conflicts with the Seminole people in Florida; camp and home life during the American Civil War; and women teachers in the period following the war's end. There are also a few travel diaries documenting journeys in the antebellum South, and a diary commenting on life in Key West, Fla.; Miami, Fla.; and Tampa, Fla.

Extent:
2,000 items (3.0 linear feet)
Language:
Materials in English

Background

Biographical / historical:

William H. Wills (1809-1889) of Halifax County, N.C., was a white general merchant, a Methodist Protestant minister, and a cotton plantation owner. Over his long ministerial career, circa 1844-1889, Wills held many church offices, including president of the North Carolina Annual Conference, president of the General Conference, president of the District, and superannuate. He gave up merchandising in 1843 to focus on his ministerial duties and his cotton plantation in Brinkleyville, N.C. In 1835, Wills married Anna Whitaker (1817-1893), the daughter of Cary Whitaker (1782-1858), a physician and owner of a plantation (Strawberry Hill) in Enfield, N.C., and later Jackson County, Fla., and Martha Susan Baker (d. 1836).

Anna had several brothers, including Cary Whitaker (1832-1865), a student at the University of North Carolina, captain in the 43rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, and judge advocate of Court Martial, 1864-1865; Reverend George A. T. Whitaker (fl. 1842-1882); and Lawrence B. Whitaker (d. 1864).

William and Anna had nine children, including Richard H. (1836-1891); Martha (1839-1927); George Whitaker (1842-1864); Lucy (1844-1908); Edward (1846-1900); Mary (1848-1941); Harriet (1852-1942); Cornelia (1854-1930); and Agnes (1858-1886). Richard was a Methodist Protestant minister who held several church offices, including president of the North Carolina Conference. George and Edward served in the American Civil War, George with the 43rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment and Edward with the junior reserves of the 2nd North Carolina Regiment. Edward became a cotton farmer in Brinkleyville, N.C., after the war. Mary and Lucy both taught school, Lucy briefly in 1866 and Mary from the late 1870s through at least the 1900s.

In 1864, Richard married Anna Louisa Norman (fl. 1844-1891), daughter of Joseph S. Norman (1804-1864), a cotton plantation owner in Plymouth, N.C. Norman was an avid secessionist and member of the North Carolina General Assembly. He had at least three other children: Thomas Joshua, a captain in the 17th North Carolina Infantry Regiment; Joseph S. (d. 1864) of the 17th North Carolina Infantry Regiment; and Swain Swift Norman. The Normans were closely related to the Swift and Swain families of Halifax, Tyrrell, Washington, Edgecombe, and Albemarle counties, N.C.

Other family members documented in the collection include Spencer D. Cotten (d. 1838), a commission merchant and financial agent in Tarboro, N.C., his son, John W. Cotten, who owned Cotton Land in Leon County, Fla., and Robert Snell (fl. 1816-1841), a liquor distiller in Washington County, N.C. Cotten was Anna Wills's uncle by marriage. The relation of Robert Snell to the Wills family is unclear.

Enslaved and formerly enslaved people documented in this collection include Lettice, a girl enslaved by the Cotton family; Washington Wills, who accompanied George Whitaker Wills and Edward Wills while serving in the Confederate Army; Bob Wills, a formerly enslaved man, who is mentioned in an 1874 memorandum concerning land sold to John W. Heptinstall on Wills's behalf.

Scope and content:

Records documenting enslaved and formerly enslaved people in this collection include an 1839 letter to William H. Wills from John Cotten (Cotton Land, Leon County, Fla.), regarding an enslaved girl named Lettice; an item, dated circa 1860, referring to the sale of an enslaved girl; two letters written by Washington Wills, an enslaved man, in 1864 and 1865; a class book from the Albemarle Circuit of the Washington County Methodist Protestant Church that contains lists of enslaved members; and an 1874 memorandum concerning land sold to John W. Heptinstall on behalf of Bob Wills, a formerly enslaved man. There is also other correspondence between white family members regarding the enslaved workforce and the overseers on their plantations, as well as the possible split between the Northern and Southern Methodist Episcopal Church due to a disagreement over slavery.

This collection offers good documentation of itinerant ministers of the Methodist Protestant church in North Carolina and church administration between the 1840s and 1890s. Information appears on circuit travels, camp meetings, local churches, finances, arbitration and trials, race relations within the church, and local, state, district, and national church administration.

Other topics on which the collection is particularly useful are marriage and family; boarding school life; plantation affairs; general merchants; slavery; politics; American Civil War camp life; and women teachers in the postbellum period. Letters appear from students at Chowan Female Collegiate Institute (Murfreesboro N.C.), Warrenton Female College (Warrenton, N.C.), Baltimore Female College, and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., and teachers at Joyner's Depot, N.C., the Oxford Orphan Asylum (Oxford, N.C.), and Littleton, N.C. Letters also appear from soldiers in the 2nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, the 17th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, and 43rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, and from Washington Wills, an enslaved person who travelled with the 2nd and 43rd Regiments. Most of the plantation papers are those of cotton plantation owners in eastern North Carolina, Jackson County, Fla., and Leon County, Fla. Business-related items include an account book for a general merchandising concern in Halifax, N.C., accounts for the Fishing Creek Navigation Company (Halifax), and an account book for a Tarboro, N.C. commission merchant.

The bulk of the collection consists of postbellum family correspondence and religious correspondence, but there are also a considerable number of financial and legal papers, including estate papers, correspondence, deeds, land surveys, receipts, loan notes, court summonses and judgments, wills, and other items. About thirty of these items are from the eighteenth century. Religious papers also contain reports, trial documents, sermons, religious essays (most written by Julia Rankin), circuit class books, and marriage licenses. Miscellaneous antebellum volumes include travel diaries, documenting travel in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama; the diary of a Tampa, Fla., land official; an arithmetic book; and a volume of poetry. There is also some genealogical material on the Wills family and related families.

Series 1 contains antebellum, American Civil War, and postbellum correspondence of the Wills family and related Whitaker family and Norman family. Included are letters from relatives in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, and New York.

Series 2 contains the religious papers of William Wills between the 1840s and 1880s, with scattered items for Reverend Richard Wills, Reverend Swain Swift, and church member Julia Rankin.

Series 3 comprises antebellum plantation, business, estate papers, and volumes, including a few eighteenth-century items, and postbellum plantation and estate papers.

Antebellum diaries and other volumes appear in Series 4.

Series 5 includes mostly genealogical notes and biographical sketches, and Series 6 contains one tintype of George Whitaker Wills.

The Addition of August 2005 is a volume of copies of business letters from William Wills dating from 1834 to 1838.

The Addition of April 2011 includes three bound travel journals and several hundred pages of undated sermon notes. The journals, covering 1851-1856 and 1866-1882, document Wills's activities as a Methodist Protestant circuit rider in North Carolina, including date and location of services, a selected biblical passage, and a general topic for the sermon. Locations appearing repeatedly include Bethesda, Harmony, Union, Corinth, Eden, and Marsh Chapel, among others. However, it is unclear whether these are the names of towns or congregations where he visited. Sermon notes, several of which are written on envelopes, include a biblical passage followed by detailed exegesis of the passage with references to related texts and Wills's own thoughts and interpretation. There are also scanned photographs and documents relating to Wills and Whitaker family members and a Whitaker family history.

Acquisition information:

Received from George S. Wills of Westminster, Md., in 1929 with several additions deposited between that time and 1955; received from Phil Perkinson of Norlina, N.C., August 2005 (Acc. 100156).

The Addition of April 2011 (Acc. 101418) received from Betsy Brodie Roberts of Oak Island, N.C.

Processing information:

Processed by: Ellen R. Strong, February 1964 and Jill Snider, August 1992.

Encoded by: Valerie Gillispie, November 2005

This collection was rehoused under the sponsorship of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1992.

Updated because of addition by Valerie Gillispie, November 2005.

Updated because of addition by Martin Gengenbach, July 2011.

Remediation by: Dawne Howard Lucas, July 2022. Updated collection overview, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content, and container list.

In 2017, we began using "white" as an ethnic and racial identity for individual and families, in addition to "Black," "African American," "Jewish," and other familiar identity terms that we have used for decades in collection descriptions. We use this identity term so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default of the people represented in our collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Sensitive materials statement:

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Indexed terms

Subjects:
Camp meetings--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Clergy--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Cotton growing--Florida--History--19th century.
Cotton growing--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Enslaved persons--Florida.
Enslaved persons--North Carolina--Correspondence.
Families--Florida.
Families--North Carolina.
Methodist Church--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Orphanages--North Carolina--History.
Plantations--Florida.
Plantations--North Carolina.
Seminole Indians--History--19th century.
Seminole War, 3rd, 1855-1858.
Sermons.
Slavery--Florida.
Slavery--North Carolina.
Slavery--United States--History--19th century--Sources
Travelers--Southern States--Diaries--History--19th century.
Women teachers--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Women--Education--North Carolina--History--19th century.
Women--Religious life--North Carolina.
Diaries (Blank-books)
Names:
Baltimore Female College.
Chowan Female Collegiate Institute (Murfreesboro N.C.)
Confederate States of America. Army--Military life.
Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 2nd.
Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 17th.
Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 43rd.
Confederate States of America. Army--African Americans.
Cotton Land (Fla.).
Greenwood (N.C.).
Methodist Episcopal Church--History--19th century.
Methodist Protestant Church (U.S. : 1830-1939)--History--19th century.
Oxford Orphan Asylum (N.C.)
Spring Grove (N.C.).
Strawberry Hill (N.C.).
Warrenton Female College (Warrenton, N.C.)
Whitaker Family Plantation (Jackson County, Fla).
Whitaker Family Plantation (Leon County, Fla).
Cotten family.
Swain family.
Swift family.
Whitaker family.
Wills family.
Norma, Joseph S., -1864.
Snell, Robert, active 1816-1841.
Whitaker, Cary, 1782-1858.
Whitaker, Cary, 1832-1865.
Wills, William H. (William Henry), 1809-1889.
Places:
Edgecombe County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
Florida--Social life and customs.
Halifax County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.
Key West (Fla.)--Social life and customs.
Miami (Fla.)--Social life and customs.
North Carolina--Social life and customs.
Tampa (Fla.)--Social life and customs.
Washington County (N.C.)--Social life and customs.

Access and use

Restrictions to access:

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to use:

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], in the William H. Wills Papers #792, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Location of this collection:
Louis Round Wilson Library
200 South Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Contact:
(919) 962-3765
wilsonlibrary@unc.edu