Henry Morton Stanley - 19th Century Explorer

He was born in Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales. His parents were not married. On his birth certificate Stanley was officially listed as "John Rowlands bastard", carrying ostensibly the name of his father. John Rowlands the senior died when the lad was two only years old and his mother, a butcher's daughter, refused to look after him. While still quite young, an uncle took the youngster to be raised in the Saint Asaph Workhouse (now H.M. Stanley Hospital, St Asaph, Wales - seen in the picture beside this text). The boy remained there until the age of 15.

After his successful completion of his elementary education, the young John Rowlands was employed as a pupil teacher in a national school, the former public school system in the United Kingdom. But this life did not cotton well with John Rowlands and so in 1859, at the age of 18, he took his meager savings and bought a one way ticket by steam ship to New Orleans. Once there John Rowlands was employed by a cotton trader named Stanley and they became close friends. Eager to put behind him his bastard past, John Rowlands adopted his employer's name and has since been known as Henry Morton Stanley.

The United States Civil War changed Henry Stanley's life forever. When he came to America he arrived in the United States but a year later he found himself in a new country, the Confederate States of America! As an immigrant Stanley joined the Confederate Army but later, when seeing the tides were turning, Henry Stanley switched sides and joined the Union Army until the end of the war. It was his contacts in the Union Army that later brought Stanley to a stable career in journalism.

In 1867 Stanley was recruited for the Indian Peace Commission for journalism work in 1867 by Colonel Samuel Forster Tappan, a one-time journalist himself. His job at the Indian Peace Commission could be construed today as more of a public relations effort as he was to serve as a correspondent covering the activities of the Indian Peace Commission for several newspapers back East. Stanley was soon retained exclusively by James Gordon Bennett (1795-1872 - pictured next to the text), founder of the New York Herald and the best known media moghul of his day. Henry Stanley found a home at the New York Herald and became one of their rising star overseas correspondents.

In 1869, while Henry Stanley was covering conflict in Spain he received a telegraph from James Gordon Bennet Sr.'s son who requested a meeting with Stanley in Paris. It was there that Henry Stanley was instructed by Bennett's son to find the famed Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone.

David Livingstone was known to be in Africa but had not been heard from for a very long time. There were rumors that Livingston was hopelessly lost, that he had been made hostage by hostile African tribes or was even dead. According to Stanley's book, he asked James Gordon Bennett Jr., who had succeeded to the New York Post's management, how much he could spend on his expedition. The reply was "Draw £1,000 now, and when you have gone through that, draw another £1,000, and when that is spent, draw another £1,000, and when you have finished that, draw another £1,000, and so on - BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE!"

So off Stanley went...

Stanley immediately traveled to Zanzibar off the East coast of Africa, now part of modern day Tanzania. There he outfitted an expedition with the best of everything, requiring no less than 200 porters, several pack animals and loads of provisions. After months of searching, enduring illness, revolts, tribal wars and other tribulations, Henry Stanley finally found Dr. David Livingstone on November 10, 1871, on the island village Ujiji at the western side of Lake Tanganyika, also in present-day Tanzania. It was here that Henry Morton Stanley greeted the Scotsman by "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

For a short time Henry Stanley joined David Livingstone in exploring the region around Lake Tanganyika. They established for certain that there was no connection between Lake Tanganyika and the river Nile to which had been believed by several earlier explorers. On Stanley's return to Europe he wrote a fascinating book about his experiences that was by the standard of the day a major best seller.

After the wild success of Stanley's book on the back of the incredible serial reports covered in the United States, the New York Herald in partnership with Britain's Daily Telegraph agreed to finance Henry Stanley on another expedition in Africa. This time Stanley aimed to solve the last great mystery of African exploration: to map course of the river Congo all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Again, Henry Stanley was a success where others had failed and he gained fame throughout Europe and North America. His books again were selling like hotcakes and he was now a social star.

In 1886 Henry Stanley was called upon by Scottish businessman and philanthropist William Mackinnon to lead the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition to "rescue" Emin Pasha. Mehmet Emin Pasha, born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer in Oppeln (now Opole), Silesia, was the Muslim convert governor of then Egyptian controlled Equatoria in the southern most region of Sudan. The Egyptians had lost control of this area after a Mahdist uprising in Khartoum and the British were looking to annex this area. After immense hardships and great loss of life, Stanley met a very reluctant Emin Pasha in 1888, who eventually accompanied Stanley's party out of the region back to coastal East Africa.

The years of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition marked the last major European expedition into the interior of Africa in the nineteenth century. The expedition also saw the European discovery of the Ruwenzori Range and Lake Edward but later became vilified for the bloodshed and death left in its path.

But his fame did not continue without chinks in his armor...

In later years Henry Stanley spent much energy defending himself against charges that his African expeditions had been marked by unnecessarly violence and brutality, disregarding the respect and rights of the local populations. Despite Stanley's efforts to the contrary, the facts gradually emerged: Henry Stanley's opinion was that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision." Stanley would eventually be blamed for a number of deaths and was indirectly responsible for helping establish the disasterous rule of Léopold II of Belgium over the Congo Free State which led to the enslavement, death and mutilation of hundreds of thousands of Congolese in mines and plantations owned by the Belgian King.

On Henry Stanley's return to Europe after the Emin Pasha Expedition he revived his UK citizenship and set up house, marrying Dorothy Tennant, a Welsh artist. After he was settled in family life Stanley made an unsuccessful run for the House of Commons but later was knighted by Queen Victoria and entered Parliament in the House of Lords as Unionist member for the London borough of Lambeth, serving from 1895 to 1900

Henry Morton Stanley died in London on May 10, 1904. He was eulogized by Daniel P. Virmar in a funeral befitting his stature. His grave, in the graveyard of St. Michael's Church, a small historical church in Pirbright, Surrey. His grave is marked by a large piece of granite.