Home › S › Stanley (SIR HENRY MORTON an English)

Stanley (SIR HENRY MORTON an English)

SIR HENRY MORTON, an English explorer; born near Denbigh, Wales, in 1840; name originally John Rowlands. When three years old he became an inmate of the poorhouse at St. Asaph, where he made such progress in the school that he was employed as a teacher of other children at Mold, Flintshire, when he went away at the age of 13. Two years later he sailed as cabin boy on board a vessel bound for New Orleans, and in that city he found a friend in a merchant, who adopted him and gave him his own name, but died HENRY M. STANLEY leaving no will. Young Stanley, left to his own resources, went to California, where he sought his fortune in the gold mines. When the Civil War broke out he became a soldier in the Confederate army. He was made prisoner, and subsequently took service in the United States navy, becoming acting ensign on the ironclad "Ticonderoga." After the close of the war he became a newspaper correspondent, writing a series of letters from Crete and Asia Minor. When the English expedition was sent against King Theodore of Abyssinia in 1867 he accompanied it as commissioner of the New York "Herald." He made his repu-