William Ridley Wills II is an American author and historian living in Nashville, Tennessee, who has authored 34 historical and biographical books as of 2024. He received the Tennessee History Book Award in 1991 for his first book, The History of Belle Meade: Mansion, Plantation and Stud. He is a past president of the Tennessee Historical Society and in 2016, was given an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from The University of the South. He is a former executive of a company founded by his grandfather, the National Life and Accident Insurance Company and was on the boards of trust of Vanderbilt University and Montgomery Bell Academy, a prep school for boys in Nashville.

William Ridley Wills, was a founder of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company in Nashville in 1902. Born in west Tennessee, Wills came to Nashville in 1893 to serve as Tennessee's deputy commissioner of insurance. There he met C.A. Craig and C. Runcie Clements and the three men formed the National Life and Accident Company after purchasing another insurance company which was being sold at auction. The new company sold health and accident insurance policies to industrial workers, a large percentage of whom were African-American. The company grew and moved into a large stone building in downtown Nashville where, in 1925, it launched radio station WSM which won international fame in creating the broadcast the "Grand Ole Opry". Wills died of a stroke in 1949. His nephew was poet and novelist William Ridley Wills, and his grandson is author and historian William Ridley Wills II.