He married on 22 June 1852 Hannah (d. April 1901), daughter of William Hankinson, of Hale, Cheshire, and had issue three sons and six daughters. His third son, Oliver (Brooke) Herford, is well known in America as author of ironical prose and poetry, illustrated by himself.
In addition to a multitude of sermons, tracts, and a few good hymns, Herford published: 1. ‘Travers Madge: a Memoir,’ 1867, 12mo; 3rd edit. 1868. 2. ‘The Story of Religion in England: a Book for Young Folk,’ 1878. 3. ‘The Forward Movement in Religious Thought as interpreted by Unitarians,’ 1895. 4. ‘Brief Account of Unitarianism,’ 1903. Posthumously published were: 5. ‘Anchors of the Soul,’ 1904 (sermons, with biographical sketch by Philip Henry Wicksteed, and portrait). 6. ‘Eutychus and his Relations,’ 1905 (sketches reprinted from the ‘Unitarian Herald’).
[Memoir by John Cuckson, 1904 (three portraits); biographical sketch by P. H. Wicksteed, 1904 (portrait); Roll of Students, Manchester New College, 1868; C. S. Grundy, Reminiscences of Strangeways U.F. Church, 1888; G. E. Evans, Record of Provincial Assembly, Lanc. and Chesh., 1896; J. E. Manning, Hist. of Upper Chapel, Sheffield, 1900; Julian, Dict. of Hymnology, 1907, p. 1718.]
HERFORD, WILLIAM HENRY (1820–1908), writer on education, born at Coventry, 20 Oct. 1820, was fourth son in a family of six sons and three daughters of John Herford by his first wife, Sarah, daughter of Edward Smith of Birmingham, uncle of Joshua Toulmin Smith [q. v.]. Brooke Herford [q. v. Suppl. II] was a younger brother. The father, who was through life a strong liberal and convinced unitarian, became a wine merchant in Manchester in 1822, residing at Altrincham, where his wife, a woman of cultivation and an accomplished artist, conducted a successful girls' school. After attending a school kept by Charles Wallace, unitarian minister at Hale Barns, William was from 1831 to 1834 a day boy at Shrewsbury under Samuel Butler [q. v.]. From 1834 to 1836 he was at the Manchester grammar school. Then, being destined for the unitarian ministry, he was prepared for entry at the ministerial college at York by John Relly Beard [q. v.], from whom ‘I first learned by experience that lessons might be made interesting to scholars.’ From 1837 to 1840 he studied at Manchester College in York, and there came into contact with German philosophy and theology. He removed with the college from York to Manchester in the summer of 1840, and thus came under the influence of three new professors, Francis Newman [q. v. Suppl. I], James Martineau [q. v. Suppl. I], and John James Tayler [q. v.], the last of whom he regarded as his spiritual father. Graduating B.A. of London University in the autumn of 1840, he began to preach in unitarian pulpits, but declined a permanent engagement as minister at Lancaster in order to accept a scholarship for three years' study in Germany. In 1842 he went to Bonn, where he attended the courses of Arndt, A. W. Schlegel, and F. C. Dahlmann, and formed an intimate friendship with his contemporary, Wilhelm Ihne. After two years at Bonn he spent eight months in Berlin, where he was admitted to the family circles of the Church historian Neander and the microscopist Ehrenberg. In the summer of 1845 he accepted an invitation from a unitarian congregation at Lancaster, where he remained a year. In 1846 Lady Byron, widow of the poet, invited him, on James Martineau's recommendation, to undertake the tuition of Ralph King, younger son of her daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace. Herford, early in 1847, accompanied the boy to Wilhelm von Fellenberg's Pestalozzian school at Hofwyl, near Bern. Herford grew intimate with Wilhelm von Fellenberg, became a temporary teacher on the staff, and accepted with enthusiasm Pestalozzi's and Froebel's educational ideas.
In Feb. 1848 he resumed his pastorate at Lancaster, and soon resolved to work out in a systematic way the ideas which he had developed at Hofwyl. In Jan. 1850 Herford, while retaining his ministerial duties, opened at Lancaster a school for boys on Pestalozzian principles. Prosperous on the whole, but never large, the school continued with some distinction for eleven years, when a decline in its numbers caused him to transfer it to other hands. Resigning his pastorate at the same time, he with his family went for eighteen months to Zurich in charge of a pupil. On his return in September 1863 he filled the pulpit of the Free Church in Manchester until 1869, acquiring increasing reputation as a teacher and lecturer, especially to women and girls. He was an ardent advocate of the opening of universities to women. Some of his teaching was given at Brooke House School, Knutsford, whose headmistress, Miss Louisa Carbutt (afterwards Herford's second wife), was educating girls upon principles closely akin to his own. Herford formed a plan of a co-educational school for younger children. In 1873 he
