Reverend Robert Addison (1754-1829) was born in Heversham, Westmorland, the third son of John and Ellinor (Parkinson) of Plumbtreebank. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1777, completing his BA in 1781, and was ordained a Deacon of the Church of England in Norwich, Norfolk on 11 March 1781. He married his first wife, Mary Atkinson, in 1780 in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. Mary is thought to have been a descendant of Bishop Ridley. Robert applied to the Church of England's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts for missionary work in 1791 and was accepted for a position in May of that year. He was only the second Protestant clergyman to venture into Upper Canada, the first being Anglican Rev John Stuart, who arrived in Cataraqui (Kingston) in 1786.