Henry Adrian Churchill

Henry Adrian Churchill CB (16 September 1828 – 12 July 1886) was an archaeological explorer of ancient Mesopotamia and a British diplomat who stopped much of the commercial slavery in Zanzibar and helped prevent a war between Zanzibar and Oman. Family and early life Churchill was born in Adrianople (modern day Edirne) in Turkish Thrace, the son of William Nosworthy Churchill. His second name was derived from his place of birth. His father was familiar with the Turkish language and the Ottoman Turkish script, having worked as a dragoman for the American Embassy in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and founded the first semi-official newspaper Ceride-i Havadis . His mother Beatrix (née Belhomme) was the daughter of a French merchant who had settled in Turkey. He married Maria Braniefska (b. Warsaw 1839? – d. Pará, Brazil 1905) with whom he had 7 children. Four of his five sons, Harry Lionel (1860–1924), Sidney John Alexander (1862–1921), William Algernon (1865–1947), and George Percy (1877-1973) followed him into the diplomatic service. Education In 1837, when aged nine, his father sent him to England to attend boarding schools in Ewell and then Kentish Town, where he learnt English and mathematics. In 1841 he went to Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris where he studied languages, mathematics, and art. In 1846 he returned to Constantinople aged 18.