Author: WOOLLS, William
Biography:
WOOLLS, William (1814-93: ADB)
He was born on 30 Mar. 1814 and baptised on 8 May at St. Lawrence, Winchester, Hampshire, the nineteenth child of Edward Woolls, linen-draper and wholesaler, and Sarah Bryan, who had married at her parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, London, on 21 Aug. 1787. He was educated at Bishop Waltham’s grammar school and encouraged by his godfather, Canon Thomas Westcombe of Winchester College. He emigrated to Australia, arriving in Sydney on 16 Apr. 1832. His verse and classical knowledge impressed Archdeacon William Broughton who found him a position at the King’s School, Parramatta. He later moved to Sydney College. He published the two works listed here soon after his arrival. They are rare, with the only known copies in Australia, but they have been digitised by the National Library. He also contributed to newspapers and periodicals--reprinting many pieces in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (Sydney 1838)--and continued to publish occasional verse. By the 1840s he had established a school at Broughton House, Paramatta, where for 25 years he taught many of the sons of prosperous colonists. He developed an interest in botany in the 1840s through his friendship with Rev. James Walker, headmaster of the King’s School (1843-48), and made significant contributions to Australian botany, which included A Contribution to the Flora of Australia (1867), Lectures on the Vegetable Kingdom (1879), and The Plants of New South Wales (1885). He twice refused ordination but eventually was ordained in 1873 and became a rural minister at Richmond. He retired in 1883. He married Dinah Catherine Hall on 28 June 1838 at St. John’s Parramatta. They had a son and a daughter. She died of childbirth complications on 12 July 1844. He then married a widow, Ann Boag, on 16 July 1845, also at St. John’s, Paramatta. She died on 7 Mar. 1861. He then married Sarah Lowe on 25 June 1862 at St. Paul’s, Narellan. He died of paraplegia at Burwood on 14 Mar. 1893 and was buried at St. John’s, Parramatta, leaving an estate of just under £2500. (ADB 26 May 2024; ancestry.co.uk 26 May 2024; M. M. H. Thompson, William Woolls [1986]; E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935 [1835] 1: 23, 228; Percival Serle, A Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse [1925], 221; Elizabeth Webby, Early Australian Poetry [1982], 21, 23, 77-9; Sydney Morning Herald 15 Mar. 1893) AA