Personal Life
Samuel married Sarah Ann Holmes Dixon in Leeds on 7 December 1843. They had three daughters, Janet, Edith and Lillian, and two sons, William and Samuel. In his late teens, Samuel junior contracted a lung disease, and his father was advised to send him on a long sea voyage. The letters young Samuel wrote home, and the log he kept of his journey to Australia and America between February 1869 and March 1871, were later edited by his father and published in London in 1877, under the title 'A Boy's Voyage Round the World'.
Samuel senior's grandchildren include Sir Walter Smiles, an Ulster Unionist Party MP. Through this family, Samuel Smiles is also the great-great-grandfather of popular explorer Bear Grylls.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Smiles
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