John Stephenson Rowntree

Who was John Stephenson Rowntree?

John Stephenson Rowntree was a Director of Rowntree's, the York confectionery company and a reformer of the Quaker movement in the United Kingdom.

He was the eldest son of Joseph Rowntree and Sarah Stephenson, his wife. He was born on 2 May 1834.

He married Elizabeth Hotham on 25 August 1858. They had nine children. Following her death, he married, on 10 April 1878, Helen Doncaster.

His book, Quakerism Past and Present, written at the age of 24, analyses the state of nineteenth-century British Quakerism and was a cause of some essential reforms. He supported Quaker education in York and the training of women teachers and the higher education of women, in general. He was editor of The Friend from 1875 to 1878.

He was an ardent botanist, a keen archaeologist, and well versed in the history of York. He was elected lord mayor in 1880 and during his aldermanship devoted himself to putting the city's unsatisfactory finances on to a sound basis.

He died in London on 13 April 1907. After his death, some of his writings were collected and published by Phoebe Doncaster, together with a memoir, as John Stephenson Rowntree, his life and work.