(bap. 1751, d. 1823)
by Stephen Grellet, 1792
© Religious Society of Friends
(Quakers) in Britain
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
“William Dickson (bap. 1751, d. 1823), writer and abolitionist, was baptized on 8 September 1751 at Moffat, Dumfriesshire, the first of four children born to Margret Russel (d. 1760) and John Dickson (d. 1803).
Following his mother’s death his father married Jean Ewart in 1763. When William was born, his father was described as a linen weaver, but he later became a manufacturer and a stamp master, required by the Linen Stamp Act of 1727 (13 George I, c. 26) to approve the length and quality of locally produced linen cloth in return for receiving a fee from the manufacturer. He prospered to such an extent that he was able to build a substantial house in Moffat that was later inherited by William. Dickson House and Dickson Street are still located in the centre of Moffat in the early twenty-first century.“
H. T. Dickinson https://doi.Org/10.1093/ref:odnb/109796 Published online: 06 October 2016
Dickson House was built by William’s father in 1772. James Dickson was a linen stamp master and possibly a woollen manufacturer. William went to school in Moffat and inherited this house when his father died. When William came home from Barbados, William Pitt sent him to the Secret Service and introduced him to William Wilberforce the person in the UK in the Abolition of Slavery.
Dickson house is now Moffat Weavers Woollen Tweed Shop.
c .1700
William emigrated to Barbados in 1772, served as a soldier, taught Maths and claimed to have served the Governor of the island. He witnessed slavery first hand and became a world famous Abolitionist.
William used this badge on his journeys and talks in Scotland. It has the wonderful question
“Am I not a man and a brother ?”
For whom African slaves the answer was no.
Read more in the University of 3rd Age newsletter from June 2020 – click on the U3A image below and scroll to the second item in the newsletter: 2. Hugh Beattie –Local History Group.William Dickson
Since developing this page we have tracked down online facsimile copies of Dickson’s two works on slavery. You may need to scroll up or down to find the start – press CTRL + Home to take you to the very first page of the facsimile copy.
2017
—In the learned Dr. Burney’s History of Music, there are figures of several ancient musical instruments, by a comparison with which, the banjay or coromantin drum would lose nothing. This Jail is a most ear-piercing instrument; but, being prohibited, is but seldom used, by the negroes, in Barbados. The black musicians, however, have substituted, in its place, a common earthen jar, on beating the aperture of which, with the extended palms of their hands, it emits a hollow found, resembling the more animating note of the drum.
In 2017 Professor Kathy Bullock of Kentucky led a Gospel Workshop in Moffat Town Hall with slave songs. She spoke of the Scottish connection with slavery and the abolition
2020
Barbados announces plan to ‘leave our colonial past behind’ by becoming a republic.
Mia Mottley
Prime Minister
The
Moffat Caribbean
Connection