ABSTRACT
In 1786 the name of Henry Overton Wills appeared, for the first time, in a Bristol trade directory as a partner in the tobacco business of Wills, Watkins & Co.; he was then only 25 years of age. Unfortunately, little is known of his early life. He was born on 2 March 1761 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where his father, Edmund Wills, is believed to have been a jeweller and watchmaker. His mother, Rebecca, was a daughter of Henry Overton, a leading Congregationalist in Andover – just over the border in Hampshire – and she had married Edmund Wills in 1756. Edmund and Rebecca also had a daughter, a younger sister to Henry Overton Wills, named Sarah. Sarah Wills moved to Bristol some time after 1786 and she married John Choules, a grocer in Broad Street. 1
