1. John Rylands was an English entrepreneur and philanthropist.
16 Facts About John Rylands
1. 2.
John Rylands was the owner of the largest textile manufacturing concern in the United Kingdom, and Manchester's first multi-millionaire.
3.
John Rylands is well known for the library founded in his memory by his widow.
4.
John Rylands displayed a "precocious shrewdness" for retailing, and in partnership with his two elder brothers expanded into the wholesale trade.
5.
John Rylands was the third son of Joseph John Rylands, a manufacturer of cotton goods, of St Helens, Lancashire, and his wife Elizabeth.
6.
In 1873, John Rylands converted his business into a limited company but he retained sole management of it.
7.
From 1857, John Rylands lived at Longford Hall, in Stretford, an Italianate mansion he built on the site of an earlier house.
8.
John Rylands was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Curriers.
9.
John Rylands was retired and reserved except in the company of his friends, and always shrank from public office of any kind, although he was not indifferent to public interests.
10.
John Rylands was a Congregationalist, with leanings to the Baptist form of faith.
11.
John Rylands was of an ecumenical spirit and hoped that sectarian differences would tend to decrease: a number of Union Chapels were supported by him.
12.
John Rylands built an institute for the benefit of the villagers of Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight, where Rylands passed some of his later years from 1882, having built a house named Longford there after his mainland estate.
13.
John Rylands married three times: first, in 1825, Dinah, daughter of W Raby of Ardwick, Manchester ; secondly in 1848, Martha, widow of Richard Carden; and thirdly in 1875, Enriqueta Augustina, the eldest surviving daughter of Stephen Cattley Tennant.
14.
The library was inaugurated on 6 October 1899, when Mrs John Rylands received the Freedom of the City of Manchester.
15.
John Rylands died at his home, Longford Hall, on 11 December 1888, at the age of 87.
16.
John Rylands was buried in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester: a fine tomb was erected over the vault and his widow was buried there in 1908.