William Nosworthy Churchill

William Nosworthy Churchill (1796–1846) was a British-born journalist who moved to the Ottoman Empire at age 19 and caused a diplomatic incident resulting in the temporary severance of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire. As an unexpected result he became the founder of the Ceride-i Havadis newspaper.

In 1815 at the age of 19 he went to the Ottoman Empire, possibly as a foreign correspondent for the English Morning Herald newspaper, daughter of a French merchant, with whom he had 11 children including Alfred Black (1826–1870), the explorer and diplomat Henry Adrian (1828–1886), and the artist William. A grandson, William Sydney Churchill, was a British-Ottoman Gendarmerie officer who served in Egypt, Crete, and Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.

He later moved to Istanbul where he was known as a wood merchant. he was appointed American Vice-Consul in 1831. In 1833 he became Acting Consul and was then recommended to be Consul following the resignation of the former incumbent. However, he was not appointed and in April 1834 was dismissed and instructed to hand over the Consulate archives and the balance of its funds. Churchill claimed that he had been defamed by a known perpetrator and asked the American President to conduct an inquiry. In compensation for his detention Churchill was handsomely compensated with the Nişan-i İftihar (Order of Glory, the second highest decoration in the Ottoman Empire),

Churchill was succeeded as publisher of the Ceride-i Havadis by his son Alfred Black who went to Sevastopol during the Crimean War to cover the fighting for English newspapers; his reports were also published in special supplements to Ceride-i Havadis. In 1860 Alfred Churchill also established a daily version of the newspaper. It was the first Turkish newspaper to be published on a daily basis during the Ottoman period. Alfred died in 1870, aged 45, but the business continued until 1887 when both papers closed.