Korah Halcomb Wills dating history

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Korah Halcomb Wills (13 February 1828 – 7 December 1896) was an English-born hotelier and politician in the northern regions of colonial-era Queensland. He was elected as one of the first mayors of the colonial settlement of Bowen in the 1860s and later became mayor of the Mackay township. Wills is best known for his graphic depiction in his diary of his participation in a native police raid on a group of Aboriginal people near Bowen. In it he describes the shooting of these people and the kidnapping of the surviving children. Wills also gives a detailed account of how he dissected the body of one of the Aboriginal men killed during the raid, took the bones back to Bowen and put them on display in order to raise funds for the hospital in that town. Wills' diary is considered by historians to be an important document in the history of the Australian frontier wars.