Researching William Arnold

After living in Providence for about two years, Arnold moved with his family and others to the north side of the Pawtuxet River forming a settlement commonly called Pawtuxet, later a part of Cranston, Rhode Island. He and his fellow settlers had serious disputes with their Warwick neighbors on the south side of the river and, as a result, separated themselves from the Providence government, putting themselves under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This separation from Providence lasted for 16 years, and Arnold was appointed to keep the peace as the head of the settlement. He died sometime during the great turmoil of King Philip's War in 1675 or 1676. His son Benedict succeeded Roger Williams as President of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1657, and he became the first Governor of the colony under the royal charter of 1663.

He was the fourth son of Thomas Arnold who was the headmaster of Rugby School. His older brothers included the poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the literary scholar Tom Arnold. Not long after his father's death in 1842, William, a pupil at Rugby School, was part of a committee of three, Arnold, W. W. Shirley and Frederick Hutchins, that drew up the first written rules for football at Rugby School. These rules were approved in August 1845 and published that same year, becoming the first known published set of rules for any code of football. Later, William served as an educational administrator (during 1855) in Punjab, in British India; as the first director of public instruction in the Punjab, he was responsible for implementing "Halkabandi" in that province. One of his most significant achievements was to enact a law separating church and state in public schools. As a result, Hindu pupils who attended these schools were no longer required to study the Bible or the Koran in public schools. This policy would later influence public schools in England as well. While working in India, William wrote several articles for "Fraser's Magazine," mainly concerning "the India question" (see bibliography). In 1853, William published a novel of Anglo-Indian life, Oakfield; or, Fellowship in the East, which explores commonalities between spiritual traditions of the East and the West, while also predicting the "mutiny" that would occur soon afterward. The main character of Oakfield is dying of disease contracted in India; its author was afflicted with the same disease. William died aged thirty-one, at Gibraltar, on his way home from India. Matthew Arnold's poem "A Southern Night" mourns his early death. William's orphaned children were adopted by his sister Jane Martha and her husband William Edward Forster.

His eldest son Edward Penrose Arnold-Forster (1851 – 18 January 1927) was a manufacturer in Yorkshire and deputy lieutenant for the West Riding. Another son, Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster, became a Cabinet minister in Arthur Balfour's government.

William C. Arnold was born in Luthersburg, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, and practiced in Curwensville and Du Bois, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

Arnold was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1898. He resumed the practice of law in Clearfield County and died in Muskegon, Michigan, while on a business trip. Interment in Oak Hill Cemetery in Curwensville.