Henry Williams (1792 - 1867)

Born 11 Feb 1792 in Portsea, Hampshire, England

Ancestors

Husband of Marianne (Coldham) Williams — married 20 Jan 1818 in England

Descendants

Died 16 Jul 1867 at age 75 in Pakaraka, Northland, New Zealand

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Biography

Henry Williams is Notable.

Henry was born in 1792, the son of Thomas Williams and Mary, and one of nine children. His father, Thomas, supplied uniforms to the Royal Navy in Gosport, and died when Henry was eleven years old.

Three years later Henry joined the Royal Navy, and served during the Napoleonic Wars. The experiences of war influenced his later decision to become a Christian missionary. He retired from the Navy on half pay when he was 23.

On leaving the navy he worked as a teacher of drawing, and he married Marianne Coldham on 20 January 1818. They were to have eleven children.

Henry and his brother William converted to Anglicanism in February 1818, having been influenced by their brother in law Edward Garrard Marsh, who was a member of the CMS. The two brothers joined the CMS, and began to take an interest in New Zealand and the native people.

Henry Williams studied surgery, medicine and learned boat building, and studied for holy orders for two years. He was ordained a deacon, and then a priest, in 1822.

In 1826 the schooner Herald was launched at Paihia by the Reverend Henry Williams for the Church Missionary Society.

He was a missionary in New Zealand for 44 years, arriving in 1823 in the company of Samuel Marsden. Henry was the leader of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in New Zealand in the first half of the 19th Century, however was dismissed from service after accusations of taking personal advantage in the acquisition of land, before being reinstated in 1854.

He played an important role in the translation of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840).

He passed away in 1867 and was buried in the grounds of Holy Trinity Church in Pakaraka..^[1][2][3]

Sources

1. ↑ "New Zealand, Civil Records Indexes, 1800-1896," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q24J-RS91 : accessed 4 August 2017), Henry Williams, 1867; citing Death, New Zealand, New Zealand, Wellington; registration number 1867/3241.
2. ↑ Deaths NEW ZEALAND HERALD, VOLUME IV, ISSUE 1149, 20 JULY 1867
3. ↑ Decease of Archdeacon Williams NEW ZEALAND HERALD, VOLUME IV, ISSUE 1149, 20 JULY 1867

• Who's Who: See https://knowledgebank.org.nz/person/henry-williams-1792-1867/

(The Knowledge Bank is a digital record of Hawke’s Bay and its people which continues to grow as more of our residents donate material from times past to be digitised and uploaded to this public website. Wherever possible, the Knowledge Bank provides the full original digitised files, free for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand License.)

Other Reading

• Robin Fisher, 'Williams, Henry', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, (accessed 5 January 2018)
• Hugh Carleton, The Character of Henry Williams. from pages 5 - 9 of Volume One of 'The Life of Henry Williams' (published 1874). Website: The Trail Of Waitangi
• Wikipedia: Henry Williams (missionary)
• Eugene Stock D.C.L., 1913, The Story of the New Zealand Mission. Published by the London Church Missionary Society, Salisbury Square, E.C. and the New Zealand C.M. Association Dept, Nelson.