Skip to main content
GSSA
The 1820 Settler Correspondence
 as preserved in the National Archives, Kew
 and edited by Sue Mackay

Additonal Information

This is pre 1820 information mainly taken from actual images of UK parish registers and other primary sources which I have personally researched. Further information about the settlers and their families once they reached the Cape can be found at https://www.1820settlers.com/

Sue Mackay

WILLSON, Thomas - Extra Data

Written by Sue Mackay on .

 

Leader of WILLSON's Party

 

London Metropolitan Archives

 

Thomas WILLSON of the Parish of St.Marylebone in the County of Middlesex, a bachelor, and Mary Ann INCE of this Parish, were married by Licence in St.Botolph without Aldgate on 13 August 1808

Both signed

Witnesses: George COWELL (Mary Ann's brother-in-law) and Sophia COLVILL

 

Percy Cowell Adams WILSON, son of Thomas and Mary Ann, baptised 11 March 1810 in St.Marylebone (born 19 November 1809)

 

Baptisms of Douglas and  Thomas not found.

 

WILLSON argued with his party members about the return of deposit money and abandoned them shortly after arrival, his place as part leader being taken by William BOARDMAN. As an architect, WILLSON drew up the first plans for the pyramid monument to Elizabeth DONKIN in Port Elizabeth, returning to the UK on the Nautilus in 1822. He later tried to institute another pyramid design, this time to act as a London Mortuary. In 1843 he attempted to lead another party of settlers to Borneo (see his letter here, which bears great similarity to his early letters to the Colonial Office in 1819).

See here for details of his early career and here for his later career.

  • Hits: 1220