was held by Rev. John Farrar, Secretary of the Methodist Conference on fourteen occasions and twice its elected president. Next to Abney House on Church Street was Fleetwood House, used as the base for Newington Academy for Girls, which was founded in 1824 by, among others, the Quaker scientist and abolitionist William Allen and run in a most enlightened and imaginative way by Susanna Corder, who later emigrated for a while to Boston USA and emerged as a talented biographer. It lost exclusive use of attractive grounds in the eastern part of Abney Park on formation of the cemetery, leaving only the school house and a small garden for the private use of the students. However, they were welcome to use the new cemetery's educational arboretum and this, along with Abney Park as a whole, was rarely shared with many others in the early years of the new cemetery, except at weekends. The school's innovative approach included transport arrangements; it commissioned the first school bus in the world. Famous people: burials and associations in the park Most notably, William and Catherine Booth, founders of The Salvation Army, are buried in a prominent location close to Church Street and next to their son Bramwell Booth and various SA commissioners, including Elijah Cadman, John Lawley, James Dowdle, William Ridsdel, Frederick Booth-Tucker, George Scott Railton, the Army's first Commissioner, Theodore Kitching and T. Henry Howard, its Chief of Staff. Earlier in the 19th century, one of the hottest issues for political and social reform was the abolition of slavery, and Stoke Newington and the Quakers, separately and together, played a prominent role in this. Indeed, William Wilberforce himself planned to be buried in the village at St Mary's Church with his sister, his will being overturned on his death since parliament considered a state funeral at Westminster Abbey more fitting. Wilberforce's son-in-law, the abolitionist lawyer James Stephen, was also a frequent visitor, as his father lived at the Fleetwood Summerhouse adjacent to Abney Park. Dr Thomas Binney, the "Archbishop of Non-conformity", has a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery that shows him at the Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1840 (with Josiah Conder); Binney is buried close to the Church Street entrance in Abney Park Cemetery. Christopher Newman Hall, who was influential on the side of slavery emancipation in the American Civil War, is buried here with his father. So is the Rev. James