David Harris Willson

David Harris Willson (18 May 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 11 December 1973 in St. Paul, Minnesota) was an American historian and professor who specialized in the history of Seventeenth–Century England.

Willson's progenitors bearing the Willson name first arrived from England in 1638, settling in Dedham, Massachusetts. Another English progenitor, John Harris, Sr., founded Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. David Harris Willson's parents were Thomas Harris Willson and Amelia Shryrock Willson.

Willson attended Haddonfield Friends School in Haddonfield, New Jersey, then Friends Select School in Philadelphia. He attended Haverford College in Philadelphia, graduating in 1921. While at Haverford he was selected for a fellowship at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he pursued a Ph.D. in English History. He received a 1923 prize which allowed him to complete his research in England, and while in England he was recommended for an instructor position at the University of Minnesota. He moved to Minneapolis in September 1924 to begin that assignment, and his Ph.D. (from Cornell) was granted in 1925.

Willson remained at the University of Minnesota until 1969. During that time he was also active in teaching and historical research. He taught summer school at the University of Chicago in 1931 and at Duke University in 1936. He was secretary of the Modern European History section of the American Historical Association from 1941 until 1946. He served on the Robert Livingston Schuyler Prize Committee. He served on the advisory board of the Yale Parliamentary Diaries Project. He sat on the program committee of the Midwest Conference on British Studies from 1959 until 1962, and was president of that conference from 1965 until 1967.

Willson was a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas in 1966 and 1967.

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