Samuel Nicholson (merchant)

Samuel Nicholson (1738–1827) was a London wholesale haberdasher, known as a Unitarian and associate of radicals. He is remembered for his social connections with William Wordsworth in the early 1790s.

Nicholson was born on 4 September 1738, the son of George Nicholson, and grandson of the nonconformist minister George Nicholson (1636–1690) of Kirkoswald, Cumberland.^[1][2] He was in business in London as a wholesale haberdasher, in Cateaton Street.^[3] His warehouse was adjacent to his home.^[4]

In the 1780s, Nicholson was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information.^[5]

Wordsworth met Nicholson through a family connection, Elizabeth Threlkeld, who had been Dorothy Wordsworth's foster mother (1778–1787) in Halifax, Yorkshire.^[6][7] Elizabeth married William Rawson in 1791; they were both Unitarians. They moved to London from Halifax, knew Nicholson, and introduced William to him.^{[8][self-published source?]}

The period when Wordsworth dined regularly with Nicholson has tentatively been placed in spring of 1793.^[9] They went together to hear Joseph Fawcett preach.^[5] Nicholas Roe has suggested that Wordsworth's further engagement with radical English reformers may trace back to his connection with Nicholson.^[10] It has been inferred, by Roe, that Nicholson probably introduced Wordsworth to Joseph Johnson the publisher.^[11] Keay places Wordsworth's own radical beliefs in the context of a period 1793–5 and contact with the views and milieu of the Society of Constitutional Information, to which Johnson also belonged: the Norman Yoke, and the Tory Bolingbroke's arguments on capital and corruption.^[12]

Nicholson, in any case, is credited with Wordsworth's introduction into the London group of radical dissenters, including William Godwin. They played a significant part in his thinking, until the middle of 1795.^[13] "Mr Nicholson" was referenced in the notes to The Excursion.^[14][15]

Nicholson was a founding partner of the Glasgow Bank in 1809.^[16] He acted as trustee of Dr Williams's Library from 1815 to 1827.^[17] He died on 26 October 1827, at Ham Common.^[18] In the last year of his life he had donated to the orphan school on City Road.^[19]

Nicholson married Mary Haydon.^[1] Their eldest daughter Caroline married in 1804 Thomas Hockin Kingdon, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.^[20] Harriet, the fourth daughter, married John Vowler of Parnacott in 1817.^[21]

The only son of the marriage was George Thomas Nicholson.^[1] He studied at Manchester Academy from 1803 to 1805.^[22] In 1806 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1809. That year he entered the Inner Temple.^[23] He became a barrister,^[22] and was President of the National Life Assurance Society; it was founded in 1829, was a mutual insurance company from 1847, and merged with the Mutual Life Assurance Society in 1896 to form The National Mutual Life Assurance Society.^[24][25]

Later in life Nicholson was owner of Waverley Abbey, which he bought from John Poulett Thomson.^[1] It had been damaged by fire in 1833, and he rebuilt it.^[26] He was High Sheriff of Surrey in 1833,^[27] and was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1835.^[28]

Nicholson married Anne Elizabeth Smith, daughter of William Smith.^[29] Of their children, Marianne, the elder daughter, married Douglas Strutt Galton in 1851.^[30][31] Laura Maria, the younger daughter, married in 1848 John Bonham Carter.^[32]

The sons were:

• Samuel Nicholson, the eldest.^[33]
• William Smith Nicholson, second son, an army officer, married in 1849 Charlotte Elizabeth Miller, daughter of Sir Thomas Miller, 6th Baronet.^[34]
• George Henry Nicholson, called to the bar in 1844.^[35]
• Lothian Nicholson.^[29]