Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS (1835

Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS (1835 - 1880)

Australian Rules player, cricketer, cricket coach

Children	Self + Spouses	Parents	Grandparents	Greatgrandparents
	Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS (1835 - 1880) + Sarah Teresa BARBER	Horatio Spencer Howe WILLS (1811 - 1861)	Edward Spencer WILLS (1778 - 1811)	Edward WILLS (1741 - 1814)
				Elizabeth (WILLS) (1739 - 1822)
			Sarah HARDING (1776 - 1823)	Thomas HARDING
				Sarah Elizabeth (HARDING)
		Elizabeth WYRE MCGUIRE (1817 - 1907)	Michael WYRE MCGUIRE

			Jane WALLACE

Pic P1. There are new suggestions that Tom Wills took part in the mass murder of Aboriginal people.(Tom Wills c. 1857 or c. 1864 (printed c. 1905-1910) by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, Australia/Gift of T S Wills Cooke 2014. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.)

Pic 1. There are new suggestions that Tom Wills took part in the mass murder of Aboriginal people.(Tom Wills c. 1857 or c. 1864 (printed c. 1905-1910) by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, Australia/Gift of T S Wills Cooke 2014. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.)

Pic 3. "The Wills Tragedy": A painting depicting the arrival of neighbouring men collecting and burying the dead, after the attack on Cullin-la-ringo.(8085 T.G. Moyle Wills Tragedy painting ca 1866. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland)

Pic 4. Wills is credited as being one of Australia's great cricketers and the founder of Australian Rules football.(Thomas Wentworth Wills c. 1859 by an unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, Australia/Gift of T S Wills Cooke 2014. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.)

Pic 5. A photographic portrait of Wills later in life. The famous sportsman experienced alcohol withdrawal before his suicide at 44, in 1880.(Supplied: Wills Family Archive/Bradman Museum Collection)

Pic 6. Many experts previously believed that Wills's leadership of the 1866 Aboriginal cricket team, gathered in this photograph at the MCG, was a sign that he bore no grudge against Aboriginal people for the death of his father Horatio.(Supplied: Bradman Museum Collection)

Pic 7. Two years after Wills led them, the Aboriginal team would become the first Australian cricket team to tour England.(Supplied: Bradman Museum Collection)

Pic 8. A bronze statue outside the MCG depicts Wills (middle) umpiring one of the earliest games of Australian Rules football in 1858, played between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College in the nearby Yarra Park.(Wikimedia Commons)

Pic 9. TW Wills, by William Handcock, 1870.(Courtesy of the MCC Museum collection (M6576).)

Pic 10. A commemorative plaque for Tom Wills, in his hometown of Moyston.

b. 19 Aug 1835 at Molonglo Plains, New South Wales, Australia

+. Sarah Teresa BARBER

d. 02 May 1880 at Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia aged 44

Cause of Death:

suicide - stabbed himself with siccors

Near Relatives of Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS (1835 - 1880)
Relationship	Person	Born	Birth Place	Died	Death Place	Age
Grandfather	Edward Spencer WILLS	13 Aug 1778	Middlesex, England	14 May 1811	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	32
Grandmother	Sarah HARDING	01 Aug 1776	Middlesex, England	08 Jul 1823	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	46
Grandfather	Michael WYRE MCGUIRE
Grandmother	Jane WALLACE

Father	Horatio Spencer Howe WILLS	05 Oct 1811	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	17 Oct 1861	Emerald, Queensland, Australia	50
Mother	Elizabeth WYRE MCGUIRE	abt 1817	New South Wales, Australia	28 Dec 1907	Kew, Victoria, Australia	90

Self	Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS	19 Aug 1835	Molonglo Plains, New South Wales, Australia	02 May 1880	Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia	44

Spouse/Partner	Sarah Teresa BARBER

Sister	Emily Spencer WILLS	25 Dec 1842		06 Dec 1925		82
Brother	Cedric Spencer WILLS	01 Dec 1844	Lexington, Victoria, Australia	23 Jan 1914	Queensland, Australia	69
Brother	Horace Spencer WILLS	16 Jun 1847	Moyston, Victoria, Australia	08 Oct 1928	Kew, Victoria, Australia	81
Brother	Egbert Spencer WILLS	11 Nov 1849		11 Sep 1931		81
Sister	Elizabeth Spencer WILLS	07 Jan 1852		21 Nov 1930		78
Sister	Eugenie Spencer WILLS	28 Jan 1854		08 Jul 1937		83
Sister	Minna Spencer WILLS	01 Mar 1856		14 Feb 1943		86
Sister	Hortense Sarah Spencer WILLS	16 Aug 1861		02 Jul 1907		45

Aunt	Sarah WILLS	23 Apr 1796	Middlesex, England	10 Jan 1875	Hantshire, England	78
Uncle	William REDFERN	abt 1774	Canada	17 Jul 1833	Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland	59
Uncle	James ALEXANDER	1797		29 Jul 1877		80
Uncle	Thomas Spencer WILLS	05 Aug 1800		29 Jul 1872	Kew, Victoria, Australia	71
Aunt	Celia Eliza REIBEY	01 Feb 1802	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	28 Sep 1823	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	21
Aunt	Marie Anne BARRY	21 Sep 1801		19 May 1870		68
Aunt	Mary Ann MELLARD
Aunt	Eliza WILLS	10 Sep 1802		30 Sep 1858	St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia	56
Uncle	Henry Colden ANTILL	01 May 1779	New York, New York, USA	14 Aug 1852	Picton, New South Wales, Australia	73
Uncle	Edward Spencer WILLS	16 Feb 1805		1828	London, Middlesex, England	23
Aunt	Elizabeth Selina WILLS	30 Nov 1807		18 Jan 1811		3
Aunt	Jane HOWE	09 Nov 1816	Sydney, New South Wales, Australia	23 Nov 1880	Melbourne, Victoria, Australia	64
Uncle	John HARRISON	abt 1802	Camerton, Cumberland, England	21 Jul 1867	Williamstown, Victoria, Australia	65

Cousin	William Lachlan Macquarie REDFERN	27 Jul 1819
Cousin	Joseph Foveaux REDFERN	07 Feb 1823		abt 11 Apr 1830		7
Cousin	Sarah ALEXANDER	09 Feb 1835		08 Oct 1905		70
Cousin	Alice WILLS	06 May 1823		14 Apr 1824		0
Cousin	William Henry WILLS	01 Dec 1827		abt 1828		1
Cousin	Catherine Spencer WILLS	24 Nov 1831	Australia	27 Aug 1884	Geelong, Victoria, Australia	52
Cousin	Arthur WILLS	18 Feb 1857		14 Oct 1932		75
Cousin	Harry WILLS	13 Sep 1858
Cousin	Frederick WILLS	19 Jul 1860		abt 1861		1
Cousin	Charles WILLS	15 Nov 1861		abt 1862		1
Cousin	Margaret C ANTILL	1820	New South Wales, Australia	1849	New South Wales, Australia	29
Cousin	John Macquarie ANTILL	1822	New South Wales, Australia	1900	Picton, New South Wales, Australia	78
Cousin	Henry Colden ANTILL	1823	New South Wales, Australia	17 Mar 1913	Granville, New South Wales, Australia	90
Cousin	Alice S ANTILL	1824	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Thomas W ANTILL	1829	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Edward Spencer ANTILL	1832	New South Wales, Australia	1917	Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia	85
Cousin	James Alexander ANTILL	07 Nov 1834	Picton, New South Wales, Australia	15 Feb 1920	Brighton-Le-Sands, New South Wales, Australia	85
Cousin	Selina ANTILL	1837	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Loftus C ANTILL	1840	New South Wales, Australia	1840	New South Wales, Australia	0
Cousin	John Arthur HARRISON
Cousin	Adela Ann HARRISON	11 Sep 1834		23 Jul 1910		75
Cousin	Henry Colden Antill (Colie) HARRISON	16 Oct 1836	New South Wales, Australia	02 Sep 1929		92
Cousin	George Alfred HARRISON	1838	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Alice HARRISON	1842	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Kate HARRISON	1842	New South Wales, Australia
Cousin	Horace Washington HARRISON	1848		09 Feb 1869	Ballarat, Victoria, Australia	21
Cousin	Ernest HARRISON	1855

Niece	Eva Wills HARRISON	11 Aug 1865		27 Sep 1929		64
Nephew	Horace HARRISON	25 Dec 1866		19 Feb 1867		0
Niece	Kate Wills HARRISON	26 Feb 1868
Niece	Emily Rosalie (Rose) HARRISON	23 Jul 1869
Nephew	Henry Norman HARRISON	28 Jul 1870		09 May 1872		1
Niece	Ida May HARRISON	20 Jan 1872		01 Aug 1872		0
Nephew	Eric HARRISON	1874
Niece	Ruby Spencer HARRISON	25 Mar 1876
Niece	Alma Wills HARRISON	31 Mar 1882
Niece	Eileen Spencer HARRISON	31 Mar 1882		abt 1883		1
Niece	Elizabeth Spencer WILLS	12 Mar 1873	Queensland, Australia	24 Oct 1956	Queensland, Australia	83
Niece	Edith Spencer WILLS	06 Jun 1874	Queensland, Australia	15 Sep 1956		82
Niece	Emily Spencer WILLS	16 Aug 1875	Queensland, Australia	05 Feb 1960		84
Nephew	Horatio Spencer Howe WILLS	28 Aug 1876	Queensland, Australia	30 Aug 1960	Queensland, Australia	84
Nephew	Cedric Spencer WILLS	29 Nov 1877	Cullinlaringo, Springsure, Queensland, Australia	26 Sep 1957	Home Hill, Queensland, Australia	79
Niece	Minnie Spencer WILLS	27 Apr 1880	Queensland, Australia	23 Dec 1962	Queensland, Australia	82
Niece	Egbert Spencer WILLS	26 Jul 1881	Queensland, Australia	04 Aug 1888	Queensland, Australia	7
Niece	Rose Spencer WILLS	16 Sep 1882	Queensland, Australia	21 Feb 1969		86
Niece	Ruby Spencer WILLS	23 Nov 1883	Queensland, Australia
Niece	Ivy Spencer WILLS	30 Jul 1885	Queensland, Australia	09 Feb 1968		82
Nephew	Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS	25 Jul 1886	Queensland, Australia	22 May 1963	Queensland, Australia	76
Nephew	Colden Spencer WILLS	15 Oct 1888	Queensland, Australia	20 May 1972		83
Niece	Ethel WILLS	1872		1872		0
Niece	Ethel Mary WILLS	26 Aug 1873	Hawthorne, Victoria, Australia	22 Jun 1919	Kew, Victoria, Australia	45
Niece	Ida Claire WILLS	03 Jun 1880	Springsure, Queensland, Australia	02 Aug 1964	Los Angeles, California, USA	84
Niece	Hebe Eugenie WILLS	08 Mar 1885	Queensland, Australia	10 Nov 1948	Toorak, Victoria, Australia	63
Niece	Maud WILLS	1886	Hawthorne, Victoria, Australia	1886		0
Niece	Eva Irene "Rene" WILLS	07 Jun 1888	Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia	1980	Kew, Victoria, Australia	92
Nephew	Stanley WILLS
Nephew	Egbert Horatio WILLS	07 Dec 1878
Nephew	Eric Wilfred WILLS	20 Sep 1891
Nephew	Edward St Laurence SHAW	07 Mar 1878
Niece	Lesley Elizabeth SHAW	04 Feb 1879		26 Apr 1879		0
Niece	Ellen Marian SHAW	04 May 1880		07 Nov 1949		69
Niece	Doris Minna SHAW	10 Jul 1881		12 Jul 1933		52
Niece	Elshie Adela SHAW	27 Apr 1883		12 Oct 1923		40
Niece	Phyllis Joan SHAW	18 Sep 1886		18 Jun 1887		0
Nephew	Horace Forster SHAW	06 Jun 1888		30 Apr 1968		79
Nephew	Lester Boyd SHAW	06 Nov 1890
Nephew	Max Douglas SHAW	17 Jul 1897
Niece	Eva CUE			26 Jul 1972
Niece	Claudia BLOMFIELD-BROWN	12 Mar 1884		27 Jun 1934		50
Nephew	Harold BLOMFIELD-BROWN	22 Apr 1885		18 Apr 1964		78
Nephew	Reginald BLOMFIELD-BROWN	24 Jan 1890
Niece	Katherine HARDING

Brother in Law	Henry Colden Antill (Colie) HARRISON	16 Oct 1836	New South Wales, Australia	02 Sep 1929		92
Sister in Law	Elizabeth Henrietta MACDONALD	26 Dec 1850	Breewarner, Murrumbidgee, New South Wales, Australia	25 Jan 1944	Queensland, Australia	93
Sister in Law	Sarah Eliza BESWICKE	04 May 1857		16 Dec 1916	Sandham, Victoria, Australia	59
Sister in Law	Mary BESWICKE	27 Jun 1853		10 Dec 1930		77
Brother in Law	Edward Lesley SHAW	16 Jan 1849	Geelong, Victoria, Australia	08 Apr 1908		59
Brother in Law	T G CUE
Brother in Law	Peter TYSON
Brother in Law	Harold BLOMFIELD-BROWN	1857
Brother in Law	George Clarence HARDING

Events in Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS (1835 - 1880)'s life
Date	Age	Event	Place	Notes	Src
19 Aug 1835		Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS was born	Molonglo Plains, New South Wales, Australia	V18353071 45B/1835	36
17 Oct 1861	26	Death of father Horatio Spencer Howe WILLS (aged 50)	Emerald, Queensland, Australia	Note 1	36
02 May 1880	44	Thomas Wentworth Spencer WILLS died	Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia	committed suicide	36

Note 1: 1862/356
murdered by aboriginals

Personal Notes:

http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060443b.htm

WILLS, THOMAS WENTWORTH (1835-1880), cricketer and footballer, was born on 19 December 1835 at Molonglo Plains, New South Wales, eldest son of Horatio Spencer Howe Wills and his wife Elizabeth, née McGuire. He was educated in Melbourne until 1852 when he went to Rugby School where he played football and captained the cricket XI. Intended for Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1856, he did not matriculate but he was included, by Oxford's permission, in the Cambridge XI in the inter-university match of that year. In 1853-56 he became a notable amateur cricketer in England, playing mainly for the gentlemen of Kent, but also for the Marylebone Club and on one occasion for United Ireland.

Wills returned to Melbourne late in 1856 and played twelve games for Victoria against New South Wales in 1857-76, scoring 319 runs at an average of 21.27 and taking 72 wickets at 10.23. He played for several teams, but mainly for Richmond and for the Melbourne Cricket Club, of which he was secretary in 1857-58. Although articled to a Collingwood solicitor in 1859 he seems never to have practised. In 1861 he accompanied his father and others overland to take up a property at Cullinlaringo, Queensland; in October all but Wills and two others who were absent from the camp were killed by Aboriginals. After helping his brother to run the property he returned to Melbourne in 1864.

Wills then became a cricket coach and trained the Lake Wallace region Aboriginal side that toured England in 1868. As a batsman he could be crudely effective, 'He uses a three pound bat and hits terrific' said James Lillywhite, but he was noted more as a bowler. Wills was constantly accused of throwing, especially his faster deliveries. But fast or slow, thrower or bowler, he returned some devastating analyses at all levels of cricket.

A frequent and cantankerous letter-writer to the sporting press, Wills's most famous letter was in Bell's Life in Victoria, 10 July, 1858, calling for cricketers to take up a winter sport for fitness' sake. The response to this letter enabled him, his brother-in-law H. C. A. Harrison, and others to meet and draw up rules for a football game later to be known as Victorian or Australian Rules. Wills played over 210 games, mainly for Geelong, until he retired in 1876.

The indulgence in drink that seemed inseparable from the cricket of those days found a too-eager practitioner in Wills. As early as 1873 there were thinly veiled public accusations that colonial beer was affecting his cricket and in later years he had to be put under restraint. On 2 May 1880 at his Heidelberg home he eluded the vigilance of a man set to watch over him and stabbed himself to death with a pair of scissors. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind caused by excessive drinking. For one who had been called 'the Grace of Australia' and 'a model of muscular Christianity' it was a sad end. He was buried in the Heidelberg (Warringal) cemetery after an Anglican service, survived by his common-law wife Sarah Teresa Barber. Only one Melbourne paper, the Argus, acknowledged her existence and she finds no mention in Henderson's chapter on the Wills family. There were no children.
Select Bibliography

F. Lillywhite, A. Haygarth, Cricket Scores and Biographies,vols 4-5 (Lond, 1863, 1876); A. Henderson (ed), Early Pioneer Families of Victoria and Riverina (Melb, 1936); D. J. Mulvaney, Cricket Walkabout (Melb, 1967); Bell's Life in Victoria, 1857-68; Australasian, 8 May 1869, 8 May 1880; Age (Melbourne), 3 May 1880; Argus (Melbourne), 4 May 1880; Leader (Melbourne), 8 May 1880. More on the resources

Author: W. F. Mandle

Print Publication Details: W. F. Mandle, 'Wills, Thomas Wentworth (1835 - 1880)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, Melbourne University Press, 1976, pp 409-410.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/suggests-afl-pioneer-tom-wills-participated-indigenous-massacres/100463708
Wills participated in massacres of Indigenous people - ABC News
SPORT Research discovery suggests AFL pioneer Tom Wills participated in massacres of Indigenous people By Russell Jackson
Posted Sat 18 Sep 2021
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images of people who have died.
A starting discovery by a sports history researcher suggests that AFL pioneer Tom Wills participated in the mass murder of Aborlglnal people during the infamous reprisal attacks that followed Queensland's Cullin-ta- ringo massacre of 1861. Melbourne-based researcher Gary Fearon has uncovered a Chicago Tr1bune article from 1895 whose author claims that Wills — Australia's first cricket superstar and a co- inventor of Australian Rules football — spoke of his participation in reprisal massacres. Wills is quoted as claiming"I cannot tell all that happened, but know we killed all In sight," and describes his murder of an Aboriginal man who'd Stolen W1tls's treasured cricket jacket during the attack on Cukin-la-ringo.

Key points:
• A Chicago Tribune article from 1895 claims Tom Wills spoke of his participation in reprisals foLLowing the Cullin-la-ringo massacre
• Wills is quoted as claiming "we killed all in sight"
• He also describes murdering an Aboriginal man who stole his jacket

"Nothing else like it has previously been found," Fearon says.
"It's the only example I know of where a private conversation with Wills 1s being recorded at anywhere near this length and about events of such a serious nature."

On October 17, 1861, while Tom Wills was away getting supplies, his father Horatio Wills and 18 others in their party were murdered at the newly-established CuLtin-la-ringo station In central Queensland, which sat withln the 15,000 square kilometres of Gayiri land between Springsure and Capella. It was the largest massacre of white settlers by Aboriginal people.

The attack on the Wills party was itself a reprisal for the unjustified murder of Gayiri men by Wills’s neighbour Jesse Gregson, a squatter from the nearby Rainworth station. Gregson had mistakenly accused the Gayiri of stealing cattle.

Over the following months, white settlers and native pollce carried out what is considered one of the most lethal punitive expeditions In frontier history — a series of massacres whose death toll is estimated by experts to have reached 370 Aboriginal lives.

In the Chicago Tribune article, titled "Old Days in Australia", an anonymous correspondent with the byline "G" concludes a rac1st diatribe about his own days as a gold miner in Australia by loosely quoting W1tls's description of his tearful arrival back at the scene of the Cullin-la-ringo massacre.

In the account, Wills says:
"I turned to the drovers, who were crying like children, and ordered them to gallop to the neighbouring 'runs' to spread the news. Before morning thirty good men and true were at the door, among them two native trackers who were friendly to us, who said there was about forty in the gang. If you ever saw men set out to kill it was these. There was 'death to the devils' written on every face.

"After eight hours' gakoping we came up with the band about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. What a shout went up as we sighted them! How we gakoped down upon them! I cannot tell ak that happened, but know we killed ak in sight.just as we thought they were all settled I happened to see a dirty, shrinking, greasy brute with my I Zingari jacket on sneaking off. O, the desecration of it! Fancy my Zingari jacket! 0, didn't I gakop after him, and when I got alongside I emptied the whole six barrels of my revolver into him, the brute."

At that point, the author offers his own conclusion:

"Such was poor old Tommy Wills' tate, but the pathos with which he surrounded it, and the indignation expressed at the fekow who dared to wear his Zingari jacket, cannot be portrayed in cold print. Tommy, poor fellow, took the drink, and became a perfect wreck, and if any one ever had an excuse for doing so surety he had. It was woe betide any native that came across Tommy Wills, for he was allowed to have a sort of general prescriptive right to rid the country of what he called d-d vermin.

"But then all this was in the good old days."
'It's an incredible detail' Fearon, who has been researching sports history for a decade, says that although the article contains numerous errors and exaggerations, there are several important details that only someone intimately familiar with Wills's story could know.

Chief among them 1s Wills's outrage at the theft of his treasured Zingari cricket jacket —a souvenir of h1s times playing for the glamorous English amateur cricket club.

"It's an incredible detail," Fearon says.

”That jacket was a prized possession to Wills. In his Letter to his cousin [and co-founder of Australian Rules] HCA Harrison after the massacre, that jacket is the one personal item he lists as having been stolen by his father's killers. Until the discovery of’Old Days in Australia', Jt was the only piece of evidence we had that Tom took his I Zingari jacket up to Cutlin-la-ringo.

"When Wills finished his schooling in England and came back to Melbourne, the first sporting institution he reproduced wasn't football, but the I Zingari club."

Fearon says that much of what was previously known of Wills was sourced from Australian, British and New Zealand sources. In his own research, Fearon has looked through newspaper and online archives from other countries, sometimes translating foreign-language material to seek new insights. But he found the Chicago Tribune article with a single click on newspapers.com.

"It occurred to me that, given the flow of internationals through Australia in the mid-19th century, some may have written about Tom in accounts of their travels," Fearon says.

"But I never expected to find something like this. And this article was reprinted in newspapers from Maryland to California. Millions of Americans would have read it, and it's just been sitting there in plain sight in digital form.

"The format of the article, which is similar to yarns old-timers would wr1te for periodicals like The Bulletin, is tess important than the content, which is a mixture of uncanny corroborations and glaring errors.

"But from what we know about Wills — his character, the things he cared about, and his vocabulary — there are moments in this account where it does seem as though his voice is coming through."

'It's a truth that has been covered up'

The violence and devastation inflicted upon the Gayir1 in the wake of the Cultin-la-ringo massacre was so sustained that some academics assume descendants cannot be found. In fact, that 1s another misconception, of which Yamba Konrad Ross, a Gay1ri man Living in Melbourne's west, is proof. Determined that his people’s name and culture be kept alive, Ross became an artist and educator. He is acclaimed for his public works.

"Not a Lot of people know about Gayiri people at aLf," Ross says.

"That is why I started my art and my education — Letting my family be known out in the community. If I'd never done that, nobody would be reading my words."

In the early 2000s, Ross heard stories from his mother about the massacres and decided to take a look at Cutl1n- La-rJngo for himself.

"I went up there, and it felt like I was gonna die next if I Let people know who I was," he says.

”There was really no mention of my people petting slaughtered up there. That's when I started to just think of the old stories that I'd heard — the killing of the women and children.

"It's a truth that has been covered up to hide the fact that they put my descendants in the ground."

The suggestion of Tom Wiks's involvement in the killings was no surprise.

"Of course he would have had retribution for his father," Ross says.

"It's stuff that doesn't get talked about because people don't want to know about it. Nobody has been held accountable for it. We were classed as pests on the land.

"And it would be more than 370 people. If I've got no-one to go back to talk to about my ancestors, it wiped out a whole town. There would have been 1,000 people or more."

He also doesn't buy the image of Wills as a reconciLiatory figure.

"He was trying to make up for his wrongdoing, killing all my people," Ross says.

"He felt guilt from doing it. That's not enough. Stik to this day, even at my age, I feet the loss of culture, not connecting to the land as my ancestors did."

'A pioneer in Anglo-Indigenous relations'

Historians, biographers and academics have never previously found overwheLmlng evidence of Wltls's involvement in the reprisal attacks that followed the CuLhn-la-ringo massacre.

Many point to Wllls's early childhood spent as the only white child among Djab wurrung people In the Grampians —and his decision five years after Cutl1n-la-ringo to coach the traiLblazing Aboriginal cricket team of 1866 —as proof that Wilts bore no grudge against Aboriginal people.

lnterpretat1ons of Wills’s suic1de at 44 years of age in 1880 have also tended towards the matter of the things Wills had seen, rather than what he might have done.

The image of Wills that has resonated most strongly in recent times is h1s elevation to the status of progressive pioneer for his coaching of the Aborlglnal cricket team. Two years later it became the first Australian cricket squad to tour England.

Although Wltls fell into relative obscurity until the 1990s, his story has since been harnessed by cricket and the AFL alike: Wills was a founding inductee of the Australian Football Hatt of Fame; he is immortal1sed in a bronze statue outside the MCG; in 2008, the AFL staged ”Tom Wills Round"; in 2016, with the backing of heavy hitters from the cricket world, the Muflagh-WiLLs Foundation was established.

A 2016 documentary about Wills Labelled him "a pioneer in Anglo-Indigenous relations".

At the Bradman Museum and lnternatJonaL Cricket Hall of Fame, an exhibit on the Aboriginal team describes Wills's mentorship of them as "an act of compassion and courageous reconciliation", and "an early act of public reconciliation between Aboriginal people and the English settlers".

Fearon's discovery is likely to after those perceptions.

'It would be the only case'

The increased likelihood that Tom Wills was involved in massacres 1s no surprise to experts on the subject of frontier violence.

Emeritus professor Lyndall Ryan, who has spent much of the Last decade mapping frontier massacres at the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, turns the question on its head:"The question I would ask is,'Why wasn't Tom involved in reprisals?"’

"There were many other occasions where surviving members of such a family had, somehow or other, got some sort of semi-licence to go out there and get revenge. No magistrate was going to turn up and say,'Look, leave it to the police to deal with this. You can't be involved.' I don't think anyone ever said that in Queensland at that time.

"It would be the only case — probably the only known case in Queensland — where the strapping, surviving son was not involved."

Ryan says there is something other than the I Zingari jacket that Legitimises the Chicago Tribune account.

"A lot of the information we have about massacres on the map has come from information provided long after the event," Ryan says.

”Later stories are so important to the investigation of massacre. Everybody is told to keep quiet in the immediate aftermath. That's a characteristic of massacres. And If you speak out, you'll probably lose your own life.

”In some cases it's one of the perpetrators, who has the need to tell. We've found accounts of a massacre that occurred 30 years before, and a person has come up and sald,'I need to tell you what happened.' They remember it vividly. They're obviously very pleased to get it off their chest.

"Whether they write it up themselves, or talk to a journalist, or someone travelling through the area and meeting by accident, they do tell. It may be that Tom Wills, knowing this guy didn’t belong to the area and didn’t know what happened, [thought he] was someone he could tell about it."

Source References:

36. Type: Book, Abbr: Edward Wills Family, Title: Ancestors Treasure Hunt, The Edward Wills Family and Descendants in Australia 1797-1976, Auth: R V Pockley, Publ: Wentworth Books, Date: 1976

- Reference = 65 (Name, Notes)

- Reference = 65 (Birth)

- Reference = 65 (Death)

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