William Wallace (1779–1854), merchant, was born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In 1815 he immigrated to Philadelphia and declared his intention to become a United States citizen. Wallace relocated by 1819 to Richmond, where he sold groceries, wine, and spirits for the rest of his life. Politically, he supported free trade and states’ rights, opposed the admission of free western states and northern efforts to end slavery, and became active in the Democratic Party. By the 1850s he came to believe that southern slaves were happier and led more comfortable lives than free whites in America’s largest cities and manufacturing centers and declared himself “almost ready for secession.” Wallace owned real estate valued at $10,430 in 1850 and personal property worth almost $31,000 at the time of his death in Richmond (Wallace’s naturalization records, 27 Nov. 1815 [DNA: RG 21, NPEDP]; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1820–50; Richmond Enquirer, 15 Nov. 1831, 8 Oct. 1841, 5 July 1842; Gregg D. Kimball, American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond [2000], 93–4, 101–2, 283n, 284n; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 27 Dec. 1854; Richmond City Hustings Court Will Book, 16:530, 533; gravestone inscription in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond).