Tom Wills - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Wills was born on 19 August 1835 on his father's property on the Molonglo Plain near present day Canberra, in what was the British colony of New South Wales, to Horatio Spencer Howe Wills, and his wife, Elizabeth (née McGuire). Both his parents were descended from convicts: his mother was the daughter of two convicts transported from Ireland, and his father was the son of Edwards Wills, who was originally sentenced to death for highway robbery before having his sentence commuted to transportation. Wills' parents had married in December 1833, with Horatio Wills at the time serving as editor of the Sydney Gazette. A year after Wills was born, he was baptised Thomas Wentworth Wills after William Wentworth, a famous native-born emancipist in early colonial New South Wales.

The Wills family lived at Burra Burra near Gundagai until around 1840. In November that year, Tom moved with his parents and the rest of his family to the Mount William area of Victoria. A couple of years later at the end of 1842 they moved to Lexington, a 125,000-acre (510 km2) property in the Ararat District of Western Victoria. He was educated in Melbourne for two years.

There is no evidence that Wills played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game alleged to have similarities with Australian rules football; however, the connection may have had some influence. Wills was fluent in the language of the people with whom he grew up, the Djab wurrung, knew their songs and dances, mimicked their gestures, and the first games he played were with local Aboriginal children. Due to his family's extensive interaction with local aborigines, it is assumed that he would have at the very least seen the game being played and some believe this may have had an influence on his rules for Australian football. Lawton Wills Cooke, the grandson of Tom's brother Horace, reported that "Tom played some form of football with Aboriginal kids. We have no documents to prove this, but there is a family story that they kicked a possum skin sewn up in the shape of a ball."