Messrs William & Francis was a Philadelphia-based counting house and business firm created between Thomas Willing and Thomas Willing Francis (1767-1815) in the 1790s. The firm acquired goods from China to sell in the U.S., and later broke into the opium trade.
Philadelphia Gazette. “Advertisement.” September 17, 1794. America’s Historical Newspapers.
Dorland, W. A. Newman, Abraham Singer, Thomas McKean, Thomas Bradford, John Barker, and Philip Stein. “The Second Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry (Continued).” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 49, no. 1 (1925): 75–94.
Wright, Robert E. “Thomas Willing (1731-1821): Philadelphia Financier and Forgotten Founding Father.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 63, no. 4 (1996): 525–60.