William H. Wills was a general merchant,Methodist Protestant minister, and cotton planter of Halifax County, N.C. His wifewas Anna Wills (1817-1893), and his children included Reverend Richard H.(1836-1891); George Whitaker (1842-1864); Mary (1848-1941); Lucy (b. 1844); andEdward (b. 1846). Other prominent Wills family members were Dr. Cary Whitaker(1782-1858) of Enfield, N.C., and Jackson County, Fla.; Capt. Cary Whitaker (d.1865); Joseph S. Norman (d. 1864) of Plymouth, N.C.; and Robert Snell (fl.1816-1841) of Washington County, N.C. The collection includes family, religious, plantation,and business papers, chiefly 1803-1882, of Wills family members in Halifax Countyand relatives in Washington and Edgecombe counties, N.C. Correspondence documentsthe life of itinerant ministers and Methodist Protestant and Methodist EpiscopalChurch affairs, 1840s-1890s, with information on circuit travel, camp meetings,finances, arbitrations, and race relations within the church. Other topics includefamily life; boarding school life; plantation affairs; slavery; conflicts withSeminole Indians in Florida; camp and home life during the Civil War; and womenteachers in the postbellum period. There are letters from students at Chowan FemaleInstitute, Warrenton Female College, and Baltimore Female College, and from teachersin several locations, including the Oxford Orphan Asylum. Civil War letters are fromsoldiers in the 2nd, 17th, and 43rd North Carolina regiments, and from a slave whotravelled with them. Religious papers include reports, trial documents, sermons,essays (most written by a woman), circuit class books, and marriage licenses.Plantation papers include correspondence and legal and financial materials relatingto cotton planters in eastern North Carolina and Florida. There are also a fewtravel diaries documenting journeys in the antebellum South, and a diary commentingon life in Key West, Miami, and Tampa, Fla. The Addition of April 2011 includesthree bound travel journals and several hundred pages of undated sermonnotes. The journals, covering 1851-1856 and 1866-1882, documentWills's activities as a Methodist Protestant circuit rider inNorth Carolina, including date and location of services, a selected biblicalpassage, and the general topic for the sermon. Locations include Bethesda, Harmony, Union, Corinth, Eden, Marsh Chapel, amongothers. However, it is unclear whether these are the names of towns or congregationswhere he visited. Sermon notes, some written on envelopes, include a biblical passage followed by detailed exegesis of the passage with references to related texts andWills's own thoughts and interpretation. There are also scanned photographs and documents relating to Wills and Whitaker family members and a Whitaker family history.
