Henry Watkin was born in Pitsford, Northamptonshire, a village near Northampton in central England, to Baptist parents, William Watkin and Mary Hobson Watkin. The Watkin family was large and after his father's death at the age of six, Henry, his four older and two younger siblings were raised by their mother with income from the Watkin family's rental properties. As children, both he and a sister, Hephzibah, suffered grievous eye injuries, a circumstance which may have figured significantly later in his life.