Michael Willis

Michael Willis (1799-1879) was a Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland who emigrated to Canada and became Principal of Knox College, Toronto. A prominent campaigner for the abolition of slavery he was involved in the Canadian end of the Underground Railway. He was Moderator of the General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church of Canada in 1870. Early life Willis was born in Greenock in western central Scotland in 1798 or 1799. He was the son of Rev William Willis of Stirling (died 1827), a minister of the Old Light Burghers, a Secessionist church. He grew up and was educated in Stirling. He studied at Glasgow University and the Divinity Hall in Glasgow, with further training as a Secessionist minister at the Burgher Synod. Ministry in Scotland In 1821 he was ordained at the Secessionist Church at Albion Street in the Merchant City in Glasgow.