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Henry Wilson (1822-1907)

Written by Gillian Thompson

Occupation: Schoolmaster

Early Life

Henry Wilson (1822-1907) was a resident of Kendal from 1855 until his death more than fifty years later. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, to the businessman and abolitionist William Wilson and his wife Hannah Emmott Wilson, he was the eldest of their four children and their only son. Henry attended Ackworth Friends' School at Pontefract in Yorkshire in 1832-1836 and then served for seven-years as an apprentice teacher, to Thomas Pumphrey, headmaster of Ackworth. He visited the University of Bonn while Prince Albert was a student there in 1837-1838. and in 1843, his apprenticeship over, he undertook to complete his formal studies in Classics at that university. On his return to England, he became, for a few years, tutor to the sons of Henry Birkbeck, the Norwich banker. By 1848, he was back at Ackworth, having been appointed by Thomas Pumphrey as Master-on-Duty, responsible for overseeing, among other things, ‘the out-of school lives’ of some 180 boys. He held this post until 1885. He made the boys' lives easier by loosening strict disciplinary requirements; promoting reading for pleasure and encouraging his charges to use the library. When, in this period, Prince Albert was travelling near Ackworth, on the strength of their acquaintance at Bonn, Henry Wilson went to greet him. In 1849, Henry married Elizabeth Grimshaw (1825-1851), daughter of Caleb Grimshaw, the Liverpool shipping agent and his first wife, Sarah Thompson Grimshaw. Sadly, the marriage lasted only a short time as Elizabeth died a few months after the birth of their son, Arthur Henry Wilson (1850-1869). The widowed Henry Wilson then remained at Ackworth until an opportunity presented itself in Westmorland.

Headmaster of Stramongate

In the mid-1850s, Samuel Marshall retired as headmaster of Stramongate Friends' School for Boys in Kendal, a post he had held for forty years. The Trustees enlarged the property and in 1855 turned over the headship of what was essentially a day school to Henry Wilson. He was supported by two teachers: the Classics master who had been appointed by Marshall and also Henry Thompson (1827-1908) whom he had known and mentored at Ackworth, and who had just completed his first year as a teacher at Grove House Friends' School in Tottenham. Wilson's sister, Esther Emmott Wilson (1831-1909), returned from an extended visit to Philadelphia to assume the role of Henry's housekeeper and surrogate mother of Arthur Henry.

Three marriages occurred in 1856. Henry Wilson married Ann Thornhill (1810-1901) of the village of Ackworth, and Isaac Brown, head of the Flounders Institute (the teacher training school associated with Ackworth Friends' School) married Ann Thornhill's sister. On Christmas Day of the same year, Henry Thompson and Esther Emmott Wilson were married. Henry and Ann Wilson remained at Stramongate until the summer of 1860, when, because Ann did not find school life to be congenial, although she was content to be a stepmother to Arthur Henry, Henry Wilson retired from the school. Henry and Esther Thompson then became joint-heads of Stramongate, which they further enlarged and turned into a popular day and boarding school, and where they remained until 1878.

Retirement, Grief and Public Service in Kendal

Henry and Ann Wilson stayed on in Kendal at the house known as Ellerlea, which, after leaving the school, Henry designed and built, next door to the Browns. For a time, Henry Wilson continued as Classics master at Stramongate. He was later remembered as a devoté of the Latin classics, particularly of Virgil. He was proficient in modern languages and familiar with the Italian classics too, particularly admiring Dante. In the summer of 1864, he led a family party, including his wife Ann, his brother-in-law Henry Thompson, his sister Margaret and her husband Josiah Thompson, the shipping broker of Liverpool, who on the death of Caleb Grimshaw in 1848, had taken over Grimshaw's business, on a sight-seeing visit to north Germany and Switzerland. Henry Wilson's Kendal life took a sad turn in 1869, when his son and only child Arthur Henry, then a student at the Flounders Institute, contracted typhoid fever and died. Henry Wilson was inconsolable. The following year, in an attempt to distract him from his grief, his wife Ann, and a former student of his at Stramongate, Arthur Midgley, accompanied him to Italy, where they visited Florence, Rome and Naples. Henry was sufficiently distracted from his grief to take pleasure in seeing the places associated with the author of the Divine Comedy. On his return from abroad, Wilson spent much less time at Stramongate and he seems to have ceased altogether to visit Ackworth Friends’ School. He took up public service, becoming on four occasions mayor of Kendal and, at other times, a Town Councillor and Alderman there. By the mid-1880s, he, along with Henry Thompson, was again involved in the life of Stramongate. They served as advisers to the members of the Bryan Lancaster Trust, who were much involved in determining school policy and granting monetary support to deserving scholars, during the regime of Francis Reed and his sister, Bessie Reed, who had succeeded the Thompsons as heads of Stramongate.

In old age, and particularly after the death of his wife Ann in 1901, Henry Wilson was a familiar figure about Kendal. Always friendly and with a booming voice, accompanied by his St Bernard dog, he regularly walked in the town and greeted fellow residents by name and wished them well. When, in his last years, his mind began to fail, he was looked after by his nieces, the daughters of his sister, Esther Emmott Wilson and Henry Thompson.

Sources

  • Annual Monitor for 1909, The, Being an Obituary of Members of the Society of Friends in Great Britain and Ireland (London: Headley Brothers, 1908), ‘Obituary of Henry Wilson’, 177-186.
  • Census of England and Wales 1851-1911 town of Kendal. Westmorland
  • Census of England and Wales 1841-1861 village of Ackworth, Yorkshire
  • Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, The Diary of Henry Thompson of Arnside for 1885-1888 (c500 pp typescript), accession number H16674, reference number WDX 2106
  • Marker, W. B. (1967), The history of elementary and secondary education in Westmorland 1870-1914, Durham e-Theses https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9801/1/9801_6595.PDF accessed 1 February 2026
  • Thompson, Henry, A  History of Ackworth School, (London: Samuel Harris, 1879), 355 pp.
  • Thompson, Henry, unpublished letter to his parents, 29 January 1855
  • http://old.grimshaworigin.org/Webpages2/CalebGrimshawTransatlantic.htm accessed 29 January 2026