The Will Family

Commitment to Community

Based on the heritage of the John Will Sr. and Wolfgang Will families

When thirty individuals of the Will family, made up from the families of five brothers, arrived in Muscatine County, Iowa in late 1839 they did not anticipate that some of them would soon be committing their lives and fortunes to a Christian communal society.  New emigrants from Bavaria, they first settled with other Germans who had gathered at Bloomington.

Meeting Dr. William Keil

In early 1842 the village was visited by Karl Koch, a young man who was traveling in the name of Dr. William Keil, and speaking with Germans who might be interested in becoming Keil’s followers.  John Will, along with his brother Wolfgang, decided that they wanted to meet this Dr. Keil and went to Pittsburg with Koch to do so.  The brothers were so impressed that when Keil finally organized a communal society at Bethel, Missouri in 1844, they brought their families to the colony and entered them as members. 

John Will was then fifty one years old, his wife Susan a year older.  Wolfgang Will was only forty two.  John’s oldest child, John, was thirty two years old while George, the youngest, was just five.  Wolfgang had a wife and three children, the oldest being Henry who was twenty.

Family Friendships Established

The Will’s soon established friendships with two family groups—-the Bauer’s and the Ziegler’s, both of whom had withdrawn from George Rapp’s Harmony Society over the issue of celibacy.  The Will’s and the former Harmonists were drawn in part to Keil because he did not insist on celibacy. By the end of 1848 three of the Will sons had married, and two had married daughters of the Bauer and Ziegler families.  By 1850 marriage seemed the least likely issue to bring the families into conflict with Keil. But events that year changed everything.

Coming to Aurora

“We came to Aurora to be with you”, John Will told Dr. Keil in 1864.  This rebuke shook Keil out of a lethargy brought on by the loss of four of his children to smallpox and spurred a massive building campaign that many of the Will family members participated in as craftsmen and builders resulting in the Colony’s golden decade at Aurora.  Without the Will’s there would have been no Aurora Colony.

The Commitment to Community Continues

In like manner, descendants of the Will Family have been at the forefront as leaders of the Aurora Colony Historical Society by recognizing the important legacy left by their ancestors, a commitment to community that deserves to be honored and preserved.  We are pleased to present this special exhibit that details the important role of the Will family within the life of the Bethel and Aurora Colony’s.

The exhibit, which utilizes artifacts donated and loaned by the descendants of the Colony Will’s continues through the Communal Studies Conference ending on October 4, 2009.