William Rathbone II (22 May 1696 – 1746) was a member of the noted

Rathbone family The Rathbone family of Liverpool, England, were a family of nonconformist merchants and ship-owners who were known to engage in philanthropy and public service. The family origins trace back to Gawsworth, near Macclesfield, where the first Will ...

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

, England. William Rathbone was the son of a sawyer who lived in

Gawsworth Gawsworth is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,705. It is one of the eight ancient parishes of Macc ...

, Cheshire, and shared his name. Born on 22 May 1696, William Rathbone II took up his father's occupation as a sawyer and by 1730 was based in Liverpool,

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

, where he probably established a timber business. He joined the Society of Friends in 1731. In 1722 he married Sarah Hyde with whom he had at least two sons, William Rathbone III. and Joseph. He died in 1746. It was probably through business connections that William's son, Joseph, married Mary Darby, a sister of

Abraham Darby II Abraham Darby, in his lifetime called Abraham Darby the Younger, referred to for convenience as Abraham Darby II (12 May 1711 – 31 March 1763) was the second man of that name in an English Quaker family that played an important role in the early ...

. The Darbys had opened a warehouse for export purposes in Liverpool and then began manufacturing there at the Phoenix Foundry. William had been a customer of the Darby's

Coalbrookdale Coalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. It lies within the civil parish called the Gorge. This is where iron ore was first s ...

-based iron foundry and eventually provided loans to them. Joseph became manager of the Liverpool foundry in 1771 and in 1784 married Mary. On his death in 1790 it seems that the Rathbone interest in the business at Coalbrookdale was considerable.

References

1696 births 1746 deaths Businesspeople from Liverpool

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

People from Macclesfield English Quakers {{UK-business-bio-stub