William Wells

Who was William Wells?

William Wells, minister and farmer at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire; and at Brattleboro, Vermont.

William Wells was born at Biggleswade. He was orphaned when young, cared for by an uncle, Ebenezer Custerson a farmer at Cardington, Bedfordshire, and educated by Rev Samuel Sanderson at Bedford. He studied under Caleb Ashworth at Daventry Academy, 1765–70, a fellow student with Thomas Belsham. He was appointed minister at Bromsgrove Presbyterian Chapel in 1770, where he remained until 1793. January 1771 he married Jane Hancox of Dudley.

In the troubles which preceded American Independence, he took a strong interest in favour of the Colonies, taking an active part with Richard Price, Thomas Wren of Portsmouth, in garnering subscriptions for the relief of the American Prisoners. Convinced of the benefits of smallpox inoculation, he inoculated his own children, and inoculated the children of poor neighbours, who could not afford the surgeons’ fee. He is said to have spent two years riding about the country, inoculating as many as thirteen hundred children.

During the Birmingham riots, his home was threatened and the meeting-house escaped only by accident.