William Woolls

William Woolls (30 March 1814 – 14 March 1893) was an Australian botanist, clergyman and schoolmaster.

Woolls, the nineteenth child of merchant Edward Woolls, was born at Winchester, England and educated at the grammar school, Bishop's Waltham, and at 16 years of age endeavoured unsuccessfully to obtain a cadetship in the British East India Company's service. A year later he emigrated to Australia, landing in Sydney on 16 April 1832, and was soon appointed an assistant-master at The King's School, Parramatta, having met William Grant Broughton—then Church of England Archdeacon of New South Wales—on the way out. About four years later he went to Sydney and maintained himself by journalism and giving private tuition. He was then for a period classical master at Sydney College, but resigned this to open a private school at Parramatta which he conducted for many years. He married Dinah Catherine Hall in 1838 and she bore a son and a daughter before dying in childbirth in 1844. In 1845, he married Ann Boag.