Author: Wilson, David Hamilton
Biography:
WILSON, David Hamilton (1799-1853: findmypast.com)
He was born on 6 Oct. 1799 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of Sarah (Hamilton) and William Wilson, who had married at St. Andrew, Newcastle, on 25 Nov. 1798. His father, a tailor, was a Quaker, so his birth was registered at the monthly meeting of the Society of Friends in Newcastle; but his mother, the daughter of a shoemaker, must have had Methodist sympathies because he was also baptised on 11 Nov. 1799 at the Methodist New Connexion or Salem Chapel. His education was likewise divided between the Wesleyan Orphan House Sunday School in Newcastle and a Quaker boarding school at Ackworth, Yorkshire. Wilson made his living as a draper in Newcastle but in 1817 began to teach in the Sunday School he had attended and devoted much of his free time for the rest of his life as a volunteer for the Methodist church and the Sunday School movement. On 29 Apr. 1829 he married Ann Jewitt at All Saints, Newcastle; they went on to have four sons of whom three were still living unmarried with their parents at the time of the 1851 census. By then Wilson had become the Collector of Quay and Town dues for Newcastle and Registrar of the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. John; their eldest son, aged 21, was deputy registrar. He was active in philanthropic causes and especially in charities to do with education, such as non-denominational free schools and schools for the blind. It was as a member of the management committee of the Newcastle Sunday School Union that he composed his little verse catechism. He served also as the librarian and finally as secretary of the Union; one of his last acts was to assemble several volumes of documents related to the rise of the Newcastle Union for deposit with the central conference in London. In July 1852 he underwent surgery in Edinburgh for cancer of the mouth, but was not cured and died in Newcastle on 18 June 1853. He was buried in the Westgate cemetery, the funeral procession joined by local Sunday School teachers and children. (findmypast.com 28 June 2024; ancestry.com 28 June 2024; E. R. “Memoir,” Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury 29 June 1853; Welford 3: 645-6) HJ
Other Names:
- David H. Wilson