Our Message Board will be the central point of this page, allowing the exchange of information across the world, but check all of the other links as you may be able to assist another researcher with a problem.
Migration - The settlement of America, Canada, Australia & New
Zealand attracted families from England to the far corners of the world.
It is claimed that no matter where a Wills migrated from their family
ancestry usually leads back to
the south-west corner of England.
Communication - In the old days communication took up to three months by sailing ship. The transfer of information, by the web page or email has now brought all countries within seconds of each other.
A researcher in England commented in 1601 "It is amazing how this last 12 months we have found two or three lost family lines, email and the internet being major contributors.
Modern facilities - During the last few years many people had been busy indexing the vast amount of information available in old shipping
records, church registers and official archives. Also computers and email
have developed thus allowing this project to operate.
Presently supporting this page are very experienced senior (over 60 years
of age) researchers, who have a wealth of genealogical information
covering England, America, New Zealand and Australia.
Read of the joy and happiness of a successful search by Australian researchers.
Tip - Your ancestor may not have migrated directly to your country, but via another country.
The discovery of gold in California and Australia caused a flow of people across the Pacific
between New Zealand, Australia and California. Don't hesitate to contact any of the email addresses you find in this page.
Here are links to Wills familes in Ireland and Colombia.
Searchable Data Bases - These data bases are lists of people who lived in the 1700 & 1800's up to the present generation. Your ancestors may be in these lists.
Family Trees - These links will take you to various Wills Family Trees which have been published on the web. Your Family History or ancestors may be in one of these.
- A Wills family of Kingswear,
Devon.
- Ancestors and descendants of members of a Wills Family who migrated to Australia from
Lustleigh and other Devon towns.
- George
Wills, Bodmin, Cornwall, England, 1768
- Elmer Clifton Wills, Amelia County, Virginia. 1878
- Richard Wills born about 1558, Devon, England.
- An index of one Wills family from Devon, England. Descendants migrated to Canada, USA and Australia. Follow the "Next Page" links at the bottom of the pages as there are over 600 names in this list.
- Elmer
& Suzie Wills Amelia County, Virginia,
Email
Tom
Wills if you would like your ancestor's listing added to this
page.
Family Reunions - A Family Reunion is a very special way to renew old memories of days gone by, and to introduce the younger members of your family to the cousins that they have never met. These links will help you organise a reunion for your family.
The World Wide Wills Family at Work & Play
Email
Tom Wills if you would like your home page added to this list of links.
Searching the World Wide Web - It is not what you ask a search engine that gets results, it is the way
that you ask it, especially in researching your family tree
Practise your web searching, using the below guide-lines. In searching for an ancestor or any other person there are several rules to apply.
- It is essential to enter their name in this format "christian-name surname".
- Enter it in lower case with the christian name and the surname enclosed in inverted comers. "robert smith"
- This causes the search engine to only report any exact matches to the phrase. If you do not use the inverted comas the search engine will report any site with robert and smith in it but not necessarily as a persons name. The reference could be to robert Jones a silver smith.
- When you enter your query in lower case the search engine reports both upper and lower case matches.
- If the first search does not produce results that you require try alternative christian names e.g. for "robert smith" try "bob smith" or shortened forms such as bob, thos, ptk and wm in place of robert, thomas, patrick and william.
- Typing the family name followed by the word "genealogy" may turn up entire sites that are relevant to your family tree.
- If your receive a large number of URLs from your search, you need to provide more information to screen out sites that are not relevant. Firstly try adding your country name and plus signs. The search would now be +"robert smith" +australia. If that does not succeed try the name of the town or suburb where this ancestor lived or worked. +"robert smith" +Newtown.
- The plus sign instructs the search engine to only show results that contain both "robert smith" and australia. It is essential to enter the plus sign as the first entry as well as before each other item. This can be extended by adding further + or minus signs. +"robert smith" +homebush +doctor -melbourne -music
- This type of searching may need to be completed in several search engines.
How to Spell Wills - Wills, Willis, Willes, Wells, Wyll and
Willsmead.
These are all spelling variations faced by one Wills
researcher.
We also had a problem in locating an ancestor's migration to Tasmania
and then this letter arrived. "Raye had the brilliant idea that, because
no-one could find anything about Charles Wills, she would look up
Charles WELLS - and Viola! there he was!"
I was reminded of this when reading Megan Smolenyak's book titled "In
Search of Our Ancestors" (ISBN: 1-58062-317-4). Page 116 reads "She
remembered a Bible record that she had squirreled away. The record clearly
showed that her Catherine Jane was a sister to our missing Susan (not
Sarah, as it turned out)! The startling discovery, though, was that the
sisters' maiden name was not Cone, but Love.
Now spurred on, we wrote for a photocopy of the original death
certificate for our great-grandmother Hannah. Sure enough, on the original
is "Love" written in fancy script. Someone mistook it for "Cone" and that
is how it was transcribed for the printed record. Armed with this new
information, we were finally able to uncover documented proof for several
generations simply by looking for Love in all the right places!"
Then on page 210 we read "The records of William N. Jones had been
accidentally blended into the file of William H. Jones. In the old
handwriting, the middle initials "N" and "H" looked very similar, thus
creating the problem that was to take us so long to solve."
A further page of Wills spellings is available at the Australian Wills Familes Index.
Wills Landmarks - World Wide
- Glen Wills, Victoria, Australia
- Wills Memorial Building, Bristol, England.
- Wills Hall,
Bristol, England.
- Wills Federal Electorate Melbourne, Australia
- Wills Town Mission Cemetery - Fort Payne, Dekalb, Alabama, USA
- Wills Memorial Hospital Washington, Georgia, USA
- Original Burke & Wills Tree Coopers Creek, Australia
- Glen Wills Cemetery
- William T. Wills or William F. Wills, an old clock that appears to have William T. Wills or William F. Wills engraved on the dial.
- Bristol, England. Family photos taken September 2010.
- Wills Bridge - Waibaidu Bridge, is the first all-steel bridge, and the only surviving example of a camel-back truss bridge, in China.
- Stancomb-Wills Glacier in Antartica.
Email
Tom Wills for assistance.
Happy searching
