Frederick Smeeton Williams

Artist Info

Frederick Smeeton WilliamsNewark-on-Trent, 1829 - 1886, Nottingham

LC name authority rec. no2006056736

LC heading: Williams, Frederick Smeeton, 1829-1886

Biography:

Williams, Frederick Smeeton (1829–1886), Congregational minister and railway historian, was born in Newark-on-Trent, the second son of Charles Williams (1796–1866), a Congregational minister, and his wife, Mary Smeeton. The father was successively pastor at Newark-on-Trent and Salisbury (1833–5), before going to London, where he was for twelve years editor to the Religious Tract Society. Besides editing many of the society's periodicals, he wrote some seventy-five publications, including The Seven Ages of England, or its Advancement in Art, Literature and Science (1836) and Dogs and their Ways (1863). He subsequently lived at Sibbertoft, Northamptonshire; he died in Fisherton, Wiltshire, on 16 June 1866. Frederick Williams was educated at University College, London, and entered New College in 1850 to train for the ministry. In 1857 he was called to the new Congregational church at Claughton, Birkenhead, but stayed here only until 1859 when he went to live with his father at Sibbertoft. In 1861 the Congregational Institute was founded in Nottingham to train youths of sparse academic attainments and older men for the ministry. Its first principal was John Brown Paton, who chose Williams to be his colleague. The two were an ideal partnership, though in times of Paton's illness and the college's running into financial straits it was Williams whose personality—generous, affable, and yet businesslike—guided the institute into calmer waters. In Nottingham itself Williams made many strong friendships, was widely respected as a Gladstonian Liberal, and was well-known on the streets of the city, for which he wrote a popular guide, Nottingham Past and Present (1878). His tract The Way to the Cross (1857), had a wide circulation, and his Wonders of the Heavens (1862) and The Story of the Two Thousand (1862) were widely acclaimed. For many years he edited The Christian's Penny Magazine.

Williams also enjoyed a deserved reputation as a pioneer railway historian. Our Iron Roads appeared in 1852 and had run to seven editions by 1888. This was an excellent introduction to Britain's early railway history and was not superseded until Sir William Ackworth's Railways of England appeared in 1889. Williams also wrote The Midland Railway, its Rise and Progress (1876). This, too, had reached a fifth edition by 1888 and is particularly memorable for the writer's eye-witness description of the construction of the Settle–Carlisle railway. As the definitive work on the Midland system it was not seriously challenged until C. E. Stretton wrote his History of the Midland Railway in 1901. Williams also entered the controversy over railway nationalization, against which he argued in a pamphlet Ought the State to Buy the Railways? (1873), under the name ‘A Midland Shareholder’. He died at Forest Road West, Nottingham, on 26 October 1886, leaving a widow, Louisa Hester, and eight children; he was buried in Nottingham on 30 October.

E. I. Carlyle, rev. Ian Sellers

Sources Nottingham Daily Express (28 Oct 1886) · Nottingham Daily Express (1 Nov 1886) · Congregational Year Book (1887) · R. R. Turner and I. H. Wallace, Serve through love: a history of Paton College · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1886) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1866) [Charles Williams]

Wealth at death £10,119 12s. 2d.: probate, 27 Nov 1886, CGPLA Eng. & Wales · under £2000—Charles Williams: probate, 21 Sept 1866, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

E. I. Carlyle, ‘Williams, Frederick Smeeton (1829–1886)’, rev. Ian Sellers, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/29503, accessed 3 Nov 2015]