Ellen Wilson: Historian and author of ground-breaking works on the abolition of the British slave trade (obit.)
The historian Ellen Wilson wrote a series of important books that laid the foundations for much of the scholarly discussion that took place in 2007 on the bicentenary of the British abolition of the slave trade. Based in York in later life, she had earlier worked as a journalist in the American mid-west during the Second World War.
Of Cornish and Irish stock, she was born Ellen Gibson in Wisconsin in 1919, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 in history andjournalism. Beginning on a small local newspaper, she moved to the Milwaukee Journal's state desk in 1943(the first woman to do so), and specialised in welfare reporting. In 1950 she was awarded a Reid fellowship to enable her to study the new welfare state, and the emerging new towns in Britain. This interest led to her appointment as a public-relations officer for the new John Kennedy administration in Washington in the early 1960s. It was there that she met Henry S. Wilson, the English historian of Africa. Following their marriage, she moved with him first to Aberystwyth and then to York.
In Britain she turned her research and writing skills in a new direction, making a new name for herself as the author of a series of important books. Initially her work was published in the New Shell Guides, to Britain and then to England. But her major and perhaps most durable impact came from three historical studies. The first was The Loyal Blacks (1976), on the remarkable story of freed slaves who sided with the British during and after the American War of Independence. This pioneering study enabled later historians (notably Simon Schama in his 2005 Rough Crossings) to give the subject wider currency....
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Of Cornish and Irish stock, she was born Ellen Gibson in Wisconsin in 1919, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 in history andjournalism. Beginning on a small local newspaper, she moved to the Milwaukee Journal's state desk in 1943(the first woman to do so), and specialised in welfare reporting. In 1950 she was awarded a Reid fellowship to enable her to study the new welfare state, and the emerging new towns in Britain. This interest led to her appointment as a public-relations officer for the new John Kennedy administration in Washington in the early 1960s. It was there that she met Henry S. Wilson, the English historian of Africa. Following their marriage, she moved with him first to Aberystwyth and then to York.
In Britain she turned her research and writing skills in a new direction, making a new name for herself as the author of a series of important books. Initially her work was published in the New Shell Guides, to Britain and then to England. But her major and perhaps most durable impact came from three historical studies. The first was The Loyal Blacks (1976), on the remarkable story of freed slaves who sided with the British during and after the American War of Independence. This pioneering study enabled later historians (notably Simon Schama in his 2005 Rough Crossings) to give the subject wider currency....