Coulson, William (1738/9–1801), linen manufacturer, is most likely to have been born in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, though one source says Scotland. His father may have been called John, the name William later gave to his (eldest?) son; there was a John Coulson in Lisburn in 1697. Robert Coulson (fl.1803), who appears in the records of Lisburn cathedral, may be related. In 1764 William Coulson set up some handlooms in a workshop in Lisburn and began making damask; two years later, he established a larger factory on land leased to him by Francis Seymour-Conway (qv), 1st marquess of Hertford. The enterprise became the largest linen-damask manufacture in Ireland, and eventually employed up to 500 people in all stages of the linen-manufacturing process. Coulson himself trained the designers and weavers, and modified existing looms to produce linen self-patterned with crests and other heraldic motifs. Customers for the ultra-fine figured napkins and tablecloths included royalty and nobility in Britain and Europe. Former employees were often provided with a free house and a small weekly pension. In the nineteenth century, after William Coulson's time, the company – reluctant to lose its skilled workers – was slow to modernise; though the newly developed Jacquard looms used fewer workers than Coulson's drawlooms, which had employed up to sixteen people at a time, they were at first unable to produce such elaborate designs.
It is said that in 1798 Coulson was tricked by the Dublin authorities into identifying Bartholomew Teeling (qv), who was then court-martialled and executed. Coulson achieved local celebrity when he rode from Lisburn to Dublin in one day, shortly before he died on 6 January 1801. He married Ann Hannigan; she died 3 June 1790, aged 42. They are both buried in the graveyard of Lisburn cathedral. His sons John and William took over the factory about 1800, and were joined later by James and Walter Coulson; there was another son, Hill Coulson (a clergyman), and two daughters. The business survived till the mid-twentieth century, when the buildings were knocked down and the looms broken up. Patterns, some of which had been in use since William Coulson's time, were destroyed, but some at least of the firm's papers survive in the PRONI and in the Irish Linen Centre, Lisburn Museum.