Barbara Spooner Wilberforce

Barbara Ann Spooner Wilberforce (24 December 1777, Birches Green, Aston, Warwickshire - 21 April 1847, The Vicarage, East Farleigh, Kent) was the spouse of abolitionist and MP William Wilberforce. She was the third child and eldest daughter of Isaac Spooner of Elmdon Hall, Warwickshire, a Birmingham banker, and his wife, Barbara Gough-Calthorpe, the sister of the first Lord Calthorpe. On 15 April 1797, while at Bath, she met her future husband, William Wilberforce, to whom she had been recommended by Wilberforce's friend, Thomas Babington. The couple were married at St Swithins Church, Walcot, Bath, on 30 May 1797.

She nearly died following an attack of typhoid in 1800, after which her health was never strong. Nevertheless, she bore six children, all of whom survived to adulthood. The children were William, (July 1798), Barbara (1799), Elizabeth (1801), Robert Isaac (1802), Samuel (1805), and Henry (1807). Her daughters predeceased her, Barbara dying in 1821 and Elizabeth in 1832.

Following her husband's death in 1833, Barbara Spooner Wilberforce spent her time with her sons, Robert and Samuel, or with her sister Ann Neale in Taplow in Buckinghamshire. She is buried in East Farleigh churchyard in Robert Wilberforce's parish.

In the 2007 film "Amazing Grace", about her husband's involvement in the movement to eliminate the slave trade, she was portrayed by actress Romola Garai.