The Henry Wilson Papers reflect the life of a "weighty" Friend in southern Indiana in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although small, the collection is an important source for the migration of North Carolina Friends to Indiana. The most important item in the collection is Henry Wilson's autobiography, written in 1860. It provides an almost unique glimpse into the life of a Quaker child in North Carolina and an early Quaker settler in Indiana. Wilson apparently kept a series of diaries, to which he refers in the autobiography, but their whereabouts is now unknown. Extracts from one 1814 diary, describing a trip to Indiana, were published in the Yearbook of the Society of Indiana Pioneers in 1942.