▶Date of birth:  13 June 1834        Place of birth: Madras, India

▶Father: Lieutenant-Colonel James Mellor, East India Company      Mother: Anna Maria Hughes

▶Spouse(s): (1) Sarah Fernihough Higham; (2) Leila Anne Wildman Lushington     Date(s) of marriage: (1) 13 October 1859; (2) 4 November 1886      Place(s) of marriage: (1) Cheadle, Cheshire, (2) Dover, Kent

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican)

▶Lifestory: William was born in India, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel James and his wife Anna Mellor. He lived with his parents in Bedford in 1851, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, BA 1856; after this he was ordained Deacon in 1857 and Priest (both Chester) in 1858. In 1857 he was licensed Curate of Cheadle, Cheshire, and in 1859 he married Sarah Fernihough Higham, niece of John Fernihough Esq., of Highfield House, near Cheadle (they had a son and a daughter), and in the same year moved on to become Curate of Wath-upon-Dearn, Yorkshire.

In 1860 he was presented with the rectory of Colwick near Nottingham (valued at £220 a year, with residence). He lived both in Colwick and elsewhere during his incumbency, and in 1871, while still officiating at Colwick,  the Mellors are found at 1 Clarence Square, Cheltenhamstrong>, and from 1872-3 at 2 (now 31) Pittville Lawn, Cheltenham; William also lived with his mother in Avondale House nearby in Pittville. In 1874 he left Colwick when he was appointed Vicar of Rodmersham, Kent. He remained in Kent until 1896, though at the time of the 1881 census he lived with his widowed mother and three sisters at Avondale House in Pittville (his parents had lived there since the early 1860s).

After the death of his wife Sarah in 1886 in Kent, aged forty-eight, he married again, in the same year, to Leila Anne, eldest daughter of James Lushington Wildman-Lushington, of Norton Court, near Faversham, with whom he had three daughters, who all resided at the Vicarage in Rodmersham. In 1896 he retired from Rodmersham and took a curacy at St Stephen, South Kensington until his death in 1899, at the age of sixty-five.

▶Moved to Pittville from:        Moved from Pittville to:

▶Date of death: 4 December 1899       Place of death: Boscombe, Hampshire

▶Date of burial: 8 December 1899        Place of burial: Rodmersham, Kent

▶Notes:        ID: 3694

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden