Blyth Genealogy Pages
Bishop William WILLIAMS
1800 - 1878 (77 years)-
Name William WILLIAMS [1] Title Bishop Birth 18 Jul 1800 Nottingham, England 
[2, 3] Gender Male Death 9 Feb 1878 Napier, New Zealand [2] Person ID I27 Blyth Family Last Modified 27 Dec 2025
Father Thomas WILLIAMS, b. 27 May 1753, Gosport, Hampshire, England d. 6 Jan 1804, Sneinton, Nottinghamshire, England (Age 50 years) Relationship natural Mother Mary MARSH, b. 10 Apr 1756, Gosport, Hampshire, England d. 7 Nov 1831 (Age 75 years) Relationship natural Marriage 17 Apr 1783 Holy Trinity, Gosport, Hampshire, England [2] Family ID F60 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Family Mrs Jane NELSON, b. 8 Apr 1801, Newark Upon Trent, Nottingham, England d. 6 Oct 1896, Napier, Napier, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand (Age 95 years) Marriage 11 Jul 1825 Sheffield, England [2] 
williamandjanewilliams.jpg faithfarm10.jpg Children 1. Mary WILLIAMS, b. 22 Apr 1826, Paihia, New Zealand d. 24 Nov 1900, Te Aute, New Zealand (Age 74 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]2. Jane Elizabeth WILLIAMS, b. 23 Oct 1827, Paihia, New Zealand d. 27 May 1902, "'Pakaraka", East Cape, New Zealand (Age 74 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]3. Bishop William Leonard WILLIAMS, b. 22 Jul 1829, Paihia, New Zealand d. 24 Aug 1916, Taumata, Napier, New Zealand (Age 87 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]4. Thomas Sydney WILLIAMS, b. 9 Feb 1831, Paihia, New Zealand d. 11 Jun 1847, St Johns College, Auckland, New Zealand (Age 16 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]5. James Nelson WILLIAMS, b. 22 Aug 1837, Waimate North, Bay of Islands, New Zealand d. 11 Jun 1915, "Rouncil", Havelock North, New Zealand (Age 77 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]6. Anna Maria WILLIAMS, b. 25 Feb 1839, Waimate North, Bay of Islands, New Zealand d. 5 May 1929, Hukarere, Napier, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand (Age 90 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]7. Lydia Catherine "Kate" WILLIAMS, b. 7 Apr 1841, Kaupapa, Turanga, New Zealand d. 4 Feb 1931, Awatoto, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand (Age 89 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]8. Marianne WILLIAMS, b. 22 Aug 1843, Kaupapa, Turanga, New Zealand d. 2 Sep 1932, Hukarere, Napier, New Zealand (Age 89 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]9. Emma Caroline WILLIAMS, b. 20 Feb 1846, Whakato, Turanga, New Zealand d. 11 Sep 1921, Whakato, Turanga, New Zealand (Age 75 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural]Family ID F7 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 27 Dec 2025
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Photos WW3.JPG willwilltwo.jpg ww5.jpg wwdager.jpg William_Williams_BISHOP William Williams 1800-1878 William WILLIAMS
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Notes - According to family information William Williams was born at Plumtre Ho u se, Nottingham, England, on 18 July 1800, the ninth and youngest child o f M ary Marsh and her husband, Thomas Williams. He was baptised on 30 Oc to ber 1800. Thomas Williams was of Welsh descent, a hosier by trade and a m a n of substance in Nottingham. He was a Dissenter, but never accepted t h e Unitarian doctrine so strongly propounded in Nottingham's chapels du r ing the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He died of typhoid w h en William was three. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry on the ho s iery business Mary Williams moved with her younger children to Southwe l l, Nottinghamshire, where she began a school for young ladies.
In 1813 the marriage of William's sister, Lydia, to their cousin Edward G a rrard Marsh brought the family under the influence of this evangelical c l ergyman. Marsh interested Henry, one of William's older brothers, in t h e work of the Church Missionary Society, which in turn affected Willia m . Another consequence was that members of the Williams family turned f r om nonconformity to the Church of England. This dissenting, evangelica l b ackground considerably influenced the two missionary brothers and wa s s hared by their wives, making them opponents of all later high church p r actices within the Anglican church.
William Williams was educated at a small dame school and at Southwell G r ammar School. He completed an apprenticeship to a Southwell surgeon be f ore entering Magdalen Hall (later Hertford College), Oxford, in 1822, a s a p rospective CMS trainee, under the special care of its evangelical p rin cipal, Dr John Macbride. He came down from Oxford in 1824 with a BA i n C lassics, and the same year was ordained deacon, on 26 September, and p r iest, on 19 December. At the beginning of 1825 he was at the CMS Train i ng College, Islington, London.
From the outset of his missionary training there had been a tacit agree m ent with the CMS that he should follow his brother, Henry, to New Zeal a nd. During a fund raising tour of the Midlands news of his imminent de p arture reached William and hurried along marriage plans. At Sheffield, o n 1 1 July 1825, he married Jane Nelson of Newark, Nottinghamshire, and o n 1 2 August they embarked on the Sir George Osborne. After a three mont h s tay at Sydney they landed at Paihia, Bay of Islands, on 25 March 182 6. B etween 1826 and 1846 they had nine children, all born in New Zealan d.
At Paihia William Williams was in charge of the English boys' school an d , until the arrival of Samuel Ford in 1837, was the mission doctor. Hi s e arly fluency in spoken Maori was noted by Henry Williams: 'HeÉappear s n ot to learn it; but it seems to flow naturally from him'. In Septemb er 1 826 he began the first serious, sustained effort to produce the Scr ipt ures in Maori. By the end of 1837 he had completed the whole of the N e w Testament and the greater part of the Book of Common Prayer
In May 1835 the English boys' school was relocated at Waimate North, wh i ch became William's second station. He had already made several missio n ary journeys, some of them most important. In December 1833 and Januar y 1 834 he had gone by schooner to the East Cape and Mahia peninsula, ac co mpanied by William Yate, to return Ngati Porou Maori captured by raid i ng Nga Puhi. (These people were to become the forerunners of the CMS E a st Coast mission.) Between July and November 1834 he had travelled ove r land to the Thames and Waikato regions, accompanied by Alfred Nesbit B r own. In January 1838, with William Colenso, Richard Matthews and James S t ack, he made an overland journey from East Cape to Turanga, Poverty Ba y . He was determined that a CMS missionary be stationed on the East Coa s t, and 'when Richard Taylor, who had travelled with him on another vis i t there from March to May 1839, agreed to take over the Waimate school , h e and Jane left for Turanga on 31 December 1839.
Apart from a visit to England during 1851--52 to vindicate the New Zeal a nd mission and his brother, William Williams remained based at the Tur a nga mission station from 20 January 1840 to 3 April 1865. For many yea r s he was the only ordained CMS missionary in the church's eastern dist r ict, walking north to East Cape, south to Hawke's Bay and inland to Wa i karemoana as part of a regular visiting schedule. He made occasional o v erland journeys to Wellington and to St John's College, Auckland. Selw y n inducted him as archdeacon of the East Cape on 27 November 1842, and o n 3 A pril 1859 consecrated him bishop of Waiapu, a diocese which initia lly h ad a predominantly Maori character. (On his English visit a doctor ate o f canon law from Oxford had been conferred on him.)
In April 1857, having come to realise that the training of a Maori past o rate was his main job, William Williams moved from the first mission s i te at Manutuke (at Kaupapa between 1840 and 1844, and then at Whakato) , t o locate his Maori training schools and his residence at Waerenga-a- hi ka, a few miles inland, where there was more land available for a mis s ion farm. After leaving Turanga in 1865 he stayed for two years at Pai h ia where he began another training school at Horotutu. There he wrote C h ristianity among the New Zealanders , published in London in 1867 and i n tended as an apologia for the CMS mission in New Zealand. At the end o f M ay 1867 he moved to Napier and the following year into his final res id ence, Hukarere, on Napier hill. An agreement between Bishops G. A. Se l wyn and C. J. Abraham had added Hawke's Bay to the Waiapu diocese, and W i lliam was anxious to make Te Aute estate (set aside for educational pu r poses by his nephew and son-in-law, Samuel Williams) the site of his c e ntral diocesan school. In July 1875 he also established the Hukarere s c hool for Maori girls, close by his own home. His daughter, Anna Maria, w a s principal. On 9 February 1878 he died at Hukarere. His land at Napie r w as worth nearly £9,000, and he left other property at Kerikeri, Taur an ga and Gisborne.
William Williams once described his missionary life as 'like the unbrok e n course of a parish schoolmaster. A great deal of work, but most of i t o f the same character'. With his Maori converts he regularly 'read an d c onversed', but apart from his knowledge of the language he showed li tt le interest in Maori culture and disapproved of most Maori social cus t oms. Nevertheless his influence among his mission Maori, to whom he wa s k nown as Parata (Brother), was considerable. He generally found that ' a l ittle quiet expostulation' settled differences between Maori and mis si onary. His colleagues found him kindly, easy to get along with and 'a g e ntleman', but when his principles were crossed, either by Bishop Selwy n o r by the CMS secretaries in London, he was adamant and resolute. His d e cision to quit Waerenga-a-hika in 1865, when it was threatened by a sm a ll band of Hauhau who fraternised with his Turanga Maori, appears to h a ve been influenced not so much by the admonishments of Selwyn and memb e rs of his family, as by William's own determination to withdraw his pr e sence and his mana from those who were prepared to entertain 'false go d s'.
His attitude to colonisation and to the New Zealand wars changed as he g r ew older. In 1840 he collected signatures to the Treaty of Waitangi, a n d later defended its land guarantee against threats by settlers and Br i tish authorities. He was critical of the Waitara purchase, but thought t h at the wisest course was for the government to subjugate 'rebel' Maori ; ' salutary chastisement' would bring them to their senses. Later he re vi sed that opinion: 'All this war down to the present time [1868] has s p rung out of WaitaraÉ. As a community and as a government we have been p u ffed up, first with an idea that we were in the right, & secondly that w e w ere able to put down the natives by our own strengthÉ. We are now br ou ght very low.' Land confiscation, he came to think, was particularly u n just. For years he had regarded Turanga as a missionary enclave; retur n ing there from England in 1853 he disapproved of the attempt made by h i s locum, T. S. Grace, to introduce European trading practices.
As a steady, conscientious teacher William Williams was neither too upl i fted by the apparent missionary success of the 1830s and 1840s, nor to o d ismayed by the massive falling away of the 1850s and 1860s. All thro ug h his missionary life he kept revising the Maori New Testament and Bo o k of Common Prayer. In 1844 he was with the 'Translation Syndicate' at W a imate, but mostly he worked alone, conferring from time to time with R o bert Maunsell. His enduring memorial is A dictionary of the New Zealan d l anguage , first published at Paihia in 1844. The second edition was a l so his work, the third and fourth that of his son, Bishop William Leon a rd Williams, and the fifth, of his grandson, Bishop Herbert William Wi l liams.
-- MERGED NOTE ------------
According to family information William Williams was born at Plumtre Ho u se, Nottingham, England, on 18 July 1800, the ninth and youngest child o f M ary Marsh and her husband, Thomas Williams. He was baptised on30 Oct ob er 1800. Thomas Williams was of Welsh descent, a hosier by trade and a m a n of substance in Nottingham. He was a Dissenter, but never accepted t h e Unitarian doctrine so strongly propounded in Nottingham's chapels du r ing the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He died of typhoid w h en William was three. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry on the ho s iery business Mary Williams moved with her younger children to Southwe l l, Nottinghamshire, where she began a school for young ladies.
In 1813 the marriage of William's sister, Lydia, to their cousin Edward G a rrard Marsh brought the family under the influence of this evangelical c l ergyman. Marsh interested Henry, one of William's older brothers, in t h e work of the Church Missionary Society, which in turn affected Willia m . Another consequence was that members of the Williams family turned f r om nonconformity to the Church of England. This dissenting, evangelica l b ackground considerably influenced the two missionary brothers and wa s s hared by their wives, making them opponents of all later high church p r actices within the Anglican church.
William Williams was educated at a small dame school and at SouthwellGr a mmar School. He completed an apprenticeship to a Southwell surgeonbefo r e entering Magdalen Hall (later Hertford College), Oxford, in 1822, as a p r ospective CMS trainee, under the special care of its evangelical princ i pal, Dr John Macbride. He came down from Oxford in 1824 with a BA in C l assics, and the same year was ordained deacon, on 26 September, and pr i est, on 19 December. At the beginning of 1825 he was at the CMS Traini n g College, Islington, London.
From the outset of his missionary training there had been a tacit agree m ent with the CMS that he should follow his brother, Henry, to New Zeal a nd. During a fund raising tour of the Midlands news of his imminent de p arture reached William and hurried along marriage plans. At Sheffield, o n 1 1 July 1825, he married Jane Nelson of Newark, Nottinghamshire, and o n 1 2 August they embarked on the Sir George Osborne. After athree month s t ay at Sydney they landed at Paihia, Bay of Islands, on 25 March 1826. B e tween 1826 and 1846 they had nine children, all born in New Zealand.
At Paihia William Williams was in charge of the English boys' school an d , until the arrival of Samuel Ford in 1837, was the mission doctor.His e a rly fluency in spoken Maori was noted by Henry Williams: 'HeÉappears n o t to learn it; but it seems to flow naturally from him'. In September 1 8 26 he began the first serious, sustained effort to produce the Scriptu r es in Maori. By the end of 1837 he had completed the whole of the New T e stament and the greater part of the Book of Common Prayer
In May 1835 the English boys' school was relocated at Waimate North, wh i ch became William's second station. He had already made several missio n ary journeys, some of them most important. In December 1833 and Januar y 1 834 he had gone by schooner to the East Cape and Mahia peninsula, ac co mpanied by William Yate, to return Ngati Porou Maori captured by raid i ng Nga Puhi. (These people were to become the forerunners of the CMS E a st Coast mission.) Between July and November 1834 he had travelled ove r land to the Thames and Waikato regions, accompanied by Alfred Nesbit B r own. In January 1838, with William Colenso, Richard Matthews and James S t ack, he made an overland journey from East Cape to Turanga, Poverty Ba y . He was determined that a CMS missionary be stationedon the East Coas t , and 'when Richard Taylor, who had travelled with him on another visi t t here from March to May 1839, agreed to take over the Waimate school, h e a nd Jane left for Turanga on 31 December 1839.
Apart from a visit to England during 1851--52 to vindicate the New Zeal a nd mission and his brother, William Williams remained based at the Tur a nga mission station from 20 January 1840 to 3 April 1865. For manyyear s h e was the only ordained CMS missionary in the church's easterndistri ct , walking north to East Cape, south to Hawke's Bay and inlandto Waika r emoana as part of a regular visiting schedule. He made occasional over l and journeys to Wellington and to St John's College, Auckland. Selwyn i n ducted him as archdeacon of the East Cape on 27 November 1842, and on 3 A p ril 1859 consecrated him bishop of Waiapu, a diocese which initially h a d a predominantly Maori character. (On his English visit a doctorate o f c anon law from Oxford had been conferred on him.)
In April 1857, having come to realise that the training of a Maori past o rate was his main job, William Williams moved from the first mission s i te at Manutuke (at Kaupapa between 1840 and 1844, and then at Whakato) , t o locate his Maori training schools and his residence at Waerenga-a- hi ka, a few miles inland, where there was more land available for a mis s ion farm. After leaving Turanga in 1865 he stayed for two years at Pai h ia where he began another training school at Horotutu. Therehe wrote C h ristianity among the New Zealanders , published in London in 1867 and i n tended as an apologia for the CMS mission in New Zealand. At the end o f M ay 1867 he moved to Napier and the following year into his final res id ence, Hukarere, on Napier hill. An agreement betweenBishops G. A. Sel w yn and C. J. Abraham had added Hawke's Bay to the Waiapu diocese, and W i lliam was anxious to make Te Aute estate (set aside for educational pu r poses by his nephew and son-in-law, Samuel Williams) the site of his c e ntral diocesan school. In July 1875 he also established the Hukarere s c hool for Maori girls, close by his own home. His daughter, Anna Maria, w a s principal. On 9 February 1878 he died at Hukarere. His land at Napie r w as worth nearly £9,000, and he left other property at Kerikeri, Taur an ga and Gisborne.
William Williams once described his missionary life as 'like the unbrok e n course of a parish schoolmaster. A great deal of work, but most of i t o f the same character'. With his Maori converts he regularly 'read an d c onversed', but apart from his knowledge of the language he showed li tt le interest in Maori culture and disapproved of most Maori social cus t oms. Nevertheless his influence among his mission Maori, to whom he wa s k nown as Parata (Brother), was considerable. He generally found that ' a l ittle quiet expostulation' settled differences between Maori and mis si onary. His colleagues found him kindly, easy to get alongwith and 'a g e ntleman', but when his principles were crossed, either by Bishop Selwy n o r by the CMS secretaries in London, he was adamant and resolute. His d e cision to quit Waerenga-a-hika in 1865, when it wasthreatened by a sma l l band of Hauhau who fraternised with his TurangaMaori, appears to hav e b een influenced not so much by the admonishments of Selwyn and member s o f his family, as by William's own determination to withdraw his pres en ce and his mana from those who were preparedto entertain 'false gods' .
His attitude to colonisation and to the New Zealand wars changed as he g r ew older. In 1840 he collected signatures to the Treaty of Waitangi, a n d later defended its land guarantee against threats by settlers and Br i tish authorities. He was critical of the Waitara purchase, but thought t h at the wisest course was for the government to subjugate 'rebel' Maori ; ' salutary chastisement' would bring them to their senses. Later he re vi sed that opinion: 'All this war down to the present time [1868] has s p rung out of WaitaraÉ. As a community and as a government we have been p u ffed up, first with an idea that we were in the right,& secondly that w e w ere able to put down the natives by our own strengthÉ. We are now br ou ght very low.' Land confiscation, he came to think, was particularly u n just. For years he had regarded Turanga as a missionary enclave; retur n ing there from England in 1853 he disapproved of the attempt made by h i s locum, T. S. Grace, to introduce European trading practices.
As a steady, conscientious teacher William Williams was neither too upl i fted by the apparent missionary success of the 1830s and 1840s, nortoo d i smayed by the massive falling away of the 1850s and 1860s. All through h i s missionary life he kept revising the Maori New Testament and Book of C o mmon Prayer. In 1844 he was with the 'Translation Syndicate' at Waimat e , but mostly he worked alone, conferring from time to time with Robert M a unsell. His enduring memorial is A dictionary of the New Zealand langu a ge , first published at Paihia in 1844. The second edition was also hi s w ork, the third and fourth that of his son, BishopWilliam Leonard Wil li ams, and the fifth, of his grandson, Bishop Herbert William Williams.
BIRT: _WEBTAG
NAME WebTag
URL http://www.williams.gen.nz/[[Category:Napier, Hawke's Bay]]
[[Category: New Zealand Colonists]]
[[Category: Missionaries in New Zealand]]
[[Category: Old Napier Cemetery, Napier, Hawke's Bay]]
[[Category: Church Missionary Society]]
[[Category: Bible Translators]]
{{Migrating Ancestor
| origin = Great Britain
| destination = New Zealand
| origin-flag = Flags-3.jpg
| destination-flag = Flags-19.png
}}
== Biography ==
There is a vast quantity of information online and in New Zealand Historical Libraries and Universities, Church Missionary Society, etc. He was one of New Zealand's foremost missionaries, and renowned for his great work in translation of the Native language into written form, translation of the Bible into the Maori language and a great leader in the education of the people.
*Completed a surgeon’s apprenticeship
*B.A. in classics at Oxford.
*Came to New Zealand in 1826.
*Missionary, teacher and linguist.
*First bishop of Waiapu in 1859.
*Key translator of the Bible and prayer book into Maori.
*Wrote a comprehensive dictionary of classical Maori pub. 1844.1858
===Other Reading===*Ministry for Culture and Heritage, [https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/william-williams New Zealand History: William Williams]
*Frances Porter, [https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w26/williams-william Dictionary of New Zealand Biography] ''William Williams, Missionary, Linguist,'' 1990. (accessed 3 January 2018)*Peter J. Lineham, [https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/28007/william-williams ''Missions and missionaries - First years of the CMS mission'',] Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, (accessed 3 January 2018).*Eugene Stock D.C.L., 1913, [http://anglicanhistory.org/nz/stock1913/ ''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.
=== Burial ===
:: Place: Old Napier Hill Cemetery
:: Note: Northern Block 1 plot 14 b
== Sources ==Dates confirmed in the INTERNATIONAL GENEALOGICAL INDEX (1981 Edition) and,‘FAITH AND FARMING – The legacy of Henry and William Williams’ Evagean Publishing 1998. ISBN 1-877194-53-0 (a 720p family tree record).
===Acknowledgements===Thanks to [[Williams-35317|Gary Williams]] for starting this profile. Click the Changes tab for the details of contributions by Gary and others.
- According to family information William Williams was born at Plumtre Ho u se, Nottingham, England, on 18 July 1800, the ninth and youngest child o f M ary Marsh and her husband, Thomas Williams. He was baptised on 30 Oc to ber 1800. Thomas Williams was of Welsh descent, a hosier by trade and a m a n of substance in Nottingham. He was a Dissenter, but never accepted t h e Unitarian doctrine so strongly propounded in Nottingham's chapels du r ing the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He died of typhoid w h en William was three. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry on the ho s iery business Mary Williams moved with her younger children to Southwe l l, Nottinghamshire, where she began a school for young ladies.
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