Author: NUTTALL, William
Biography:
NUTTALL, William (b 1772: ancestry.co.uk)
Nuttall was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, to John Nuttall, a fuller, and his wife Betty Sharples; he was baptised at St. Chad’s in Rochdale on 10 Oct. 1772. His education was good enough that he became a schoolmaster in Rochdale. On 22 Jan. 1792 he married Hannah Redfern (or Redfearn); they had one son. The Lancashire Library, the primary source of information about Nuttall, states that he was three times married. A William Nuttall married Mary Dutton in Rochdale on 3 Sept. 1813 but Nuttall signed the register with X which seems odd given his status as a teacher. Two daughters were born of that marriage. Nuttall is said to have run into financial difficulties and moved to Oldham, Lancashire, where he died by suicide. No records or newspaper accounts confirming this have been located. A William Nuttall died in Oldham in 1838; was this him? Or, more likely, he was the William Nuttall whose will, identifying him as a schoolmaster and widower, was proved in the Lancashire courts on 19 Dec. 1845. On his death he left several manuscripts including “The History of Rochdale,” referred to in the title of the poem listed in this bibliography. His only other published work is Le voyageur, or, The Genuine History of Charles Manley (1806). (ancestry.co.uk 1 Jan. 2025; Henry Fishwick, The Lancashire Library [1875]; findmypast.co.uk 1 Jan. 2025; ODNB 1 Jan. 2025) SR