Author: Wilkinson, Thomas
Biography:
WILKINSON, Thomas (1751-1836: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 25 Apr. 1751 in Preston Patrick, Cumbria, to Quakers Christopher Wilkinson and his wife Elizabeth Patchett. The family had a small estate at Yanwath, near Penrith. His education was limited to attendance at a village school where he learned to read and write; his father intended him to manage the estate. He had a gift for friendship and some of his correspondence, including with Abraham Shackleton, Mary Leadbeater, Charles Lloyd, and William Wordsworth (qq.v), has survived. He regularly attended the yearly Society of Friends meetings in London—once in 1785 by riding there on his pony and in 1791 by walking. In 1787 he went on an extended tour of Scotland with John Pemberton, a Quaker from Philadelphia. He knew Thomas Clarkson and became very involved with the movement to abolish the slave trade, including attending the Penrith market with a scrolled diagram of a slave ship to collect signatures for the petition. He lost his sight towards the end of his life and died at Yanwath on 13 June 1836. He was buried on 17 June in the Quaker burial ground at Terril, Penrith. Some of his publications were written years before they were published. Other works include Some Account of the Last Journey of John Pemberton to the Highlands (1810), Thoughts on Inclosing Yanwath Moor (1812), Thoughts on the British and Foreign Bible Society (1819), and Recollections of London, 1808; a Poem (1853). (ancestry.co.uk 28 Dec. 2021; Mary Carr, Thomas Wilkinson, a Friend of Wordsworth [1905]; Sidney Gilpin, The Popular Poetry of Cumberland and the Lake Country [1875]) SR
Other Names:
- T. Wilkinson