William Wilberforce was born on August 24, 1759. He died on July 29, 1833, at the age of 73. He was from a prosperous trading family in Hull, after London, the second seaport of the English east coast. He grew up in a family where, not unusual for the time and place, many died in childbirth and younger than older. His father died when he was nine, two of his sisters in childhood. His sister Sarah would predecease him in 1816. He was the only male in his generation of the larger family, and it made him a wealthy man.
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