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Early Life & Family
William Archer was born on May 6, 1830 (some sources cite 1827), in Maghera hamlet, Co. Down. He was the eldest son of the Reverend Richard Archer (d. 1849) and Jane Matilda (Campbell) (d. 1866). William Frazier, Archer’s colleague at the National Library of Ireland, wrote in Archer’s obituary that he was the “eldest son”. Frazier’s obituary also mentions Archer’s “only brother, Holt Waring Archer”. However, various sources cite two younger brothers: Holt Waring Archer and Richard Henry Verling (H.V.) Archer, and one sister, Matilda Jane Humphreys (Archer). Sources differ on Archer’s exact siblings and their birth order, often mentioning the other siblings but not William. Swanzy’s entry for Rev. Richard Archer describes second son Holt, third son Richard H.V., and a daughter Jane, but there is no mention of William Archer listed as first son. Archer’s father was born in Wexford and was ordained a curate in 1823. Archer’s parents were married in Dublin in 1825, the same year that Rev. Archer graduated from university at Trinity College, Dublin. Rev. Archer was the Primary Curate of Magherahamlet from 1825-35. In 1835, Rev. Archer resigned from Magherahamlet and became the primary curate of Clonduff. Rev. Archer died in Hilltown Glebe on 23 Oct., 1849. His death left “a young family in straitened circumstances”. Both of Archer’s brothers predeceased him: Richard H.V. Archer died in 1863 and Holt Waring Archer died in 1883. His sister, Matilda Jane, married Dr. Hutchinson D. Humphreys in 1852. His mother Jane died in Dublin in 1866.

His paternal grandparents were William and Mary Archer. Archer’s great-uncle on his maternal side, the Reverend Holt Waring, was the Dean of Dromore. His maternal grandfather was Watkins William Verling from Dublin. His brother Richard was a Barrister in a landed estates court in Cavan.

Archer moved to Dublin around 1849, where he joined the Dublin Microscopical Society and became involved in pursuits of scientific study and librarianship which would define his life and career spending “his early life…unselfishly devoted to scientific research by which he secured a widespread reputation little understood beyond the abstract world of science.”