In the summer of 1837 in the district of Edmonton, then in Middlesex,[6] he married Emily Sarah Robinson (1813–1873). She was the daughter of William Robinson (1777–1848), lawyer and historian of Tottenham, and his wife Mary Ridge (1781–1856), daughter of the Chichester banker William Ridge. Some sources suggest that William Robinson was the illegitimate son of Anne Nelson, unmarried sister of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson.[7]