Henry Morton Stanley

Stanley's Early Years

Henry Morton Stanley was born in 1841 in Denbigh, Wales as the illegitimate son of John Rowlands and Elizabeth Parry, and was originally given his father's name.  His early years were spent at the St. Asaph Union Workhouse, a local charitable institution which was more of a Dickensian institution run by a cruel schoolmaster.  Nevertheless, Stanley was fortunate to receive some formal education which aided him later in life.

Upon turning 15 years old, John Rowland, as Stanley was still called, struck back and beat up the schoolmaster, running away from St. Asaph's for good.  He worked briefly for a haberdasher and then a butcher, but soon, however, he was working as a cabin boy on a ship travelling to the United States.  In 1859, he jumped ship in New Orleans, where he found employment with cotton broker Henry Hope Stanley, who became his benefactor and from whom Henry adopted the name by which he later became famous, as well as his American nationality.

As the American Civil War erupted in 1861, Stanley enlisted in the Confederate army and ended up being taken prisoner at the battle of Shiloh in April of 1862.  He gained his release by switching sides and joining a Union artillery unit, but was discharged on becoming ill with dysentery.  After recovering, Stanley went back to Wales, and then travelled in Europe before returning to the United States in 1864.  He served very briefly in the U.S. Navy before deserting.

Stanley then embarked on a career as a journalist in 1865, first in St. Louis and later in New York.  He covered General Winfield Scott Hancock's campaign against the Indians in Kansas in 1867, and the following year, as a correspondent for the New York Herald, he reported on the British military expedition invading Ethiopia under Sir Robert Napier.

In 1869, while reporting on a revolution in Spain, Stanley received new orders from James Gordon Bennett Jr., the owner of the New York Herald who had been impressed with Stanley's work in Ethiopia....

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