T is for Trinity College

Trinity College, properly the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592. It was the first Irish university. At the time England had two universities, at Oxford and Cambridge. Scotland had four, at St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.

Exterior of Trinity College Chapel, Dublin. Photo by Etiennekd retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Until the 1830s the undergraduate curriculum was a prescribed general course, embracing classics, mathematics, a limited exposure to science and some philosophical texts.

The Library of Trinity College Dublin began with the founding of Trinity College. It now occupies several buildings but the building built between 1712 and 1732, now the oldest library building, is particularly magnificent. It houses 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. In 1860, the Long Room’s roof was raised to accommodate an upper gallery; my forebears would have known the Long Room as a single-story gallery.

The Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin. Photo by DAVID ILIFF retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Trinity College Library: The “Long Room” in the 18th century, watercolour of James Malton. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1924 a list of those who had attended Trinity College Dublin was published. Four of my direct forebears attended the university. They were:

• My sixth great grandfather Arthur Grueber was a pupil of the well-known Anglican divine Thomas Sheridan, a friend of Jonathan Swift. Grueber studied at Trinity College, Dublin, gaining his MA in 1737 and DD in 1757. He was ordained as a deacon in 1736.
• Michael Furnell, another of sixth great grandfathers, was admitted as a pensioner at the age of 18 in 1750. He was the son of Patrick, Generosus [well-bred or gentleman], born County Limerick. He appears not to have graduated.
• Henry Bayley, one of my fifth great grandfathers, was first educated by a Mr Brown of Castlelyons.  In 1774, at the age of 17, he enrolled at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree five years later.
• William Mitchell, one of my fourth great grandfathers, was admitted as a pensioner to Trinity College Dublin on November 3 1823 aged 22, son of William defunctus [deceased], born Monaghan. He did not receive a degree.

The Alumni Dublinenses can be viewed at the Trinity College website and searched through FindMyPast.

Burtchaell, George Dames & Sadleir, Thomas U., Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland) Alumni Dublinenses : a register of the students, graduates,professors and provosts of Trinity College in the University of Dublin (1593-1860). Williams and Norgate, London, England, 1924.

Related posts:

• H is for Huguenot
• M is for William Mitchell
• N is for Nenagh
• Champion de Crespignys at Cambridge from the earliest times to 1900

Wikitree:

• Arthur Grueber (1713 – 1802)
• Michael Furnell (abt. 1732 – 1790)
• Henry O’Neale Bayley (1757 – 1826)
• William Mitchell (1803 – 1870)

Z is for zealot

My ninth great grandfather Charles Chauncy (1592-1672) was a non-conformist Divine, at one time imprisoned for his views by Archbishop Laud, who emigrated to America and later became a long-serving President of Harvard College.

Harvard president Charles Chauncy

In “Highways and Byways in Hertfordshire” (1902), H. W. Tompkins mentions Charles Chauncy in connection with Ardeley Bury:

To mention Ardeley, or to think of Ardeley Bury, is to call to mind the Chauncys, a good Hertfordshire family, whose talents were exercised in several spheres of usefulness. First, though not foremost from the standpoint of literary or historic importance, was old Charles, somewhat renowned in his day as a Nonconformist divine. Where he was born I am unable to say ; he was baptised in the church here on 5th November, 1592. He was an indefatigable reader and student, and was eminent as an oriental and classical scholar. For some time he gave the benefit of his learning to the townsmen of Ware ; but managed to fall foul of Archbishop Laud, as so many pastors did, and was summoned to appear before the High Commission Court on two occasions. I believe the precise nature of his misdemeanours, theological or political, is known to the learned, with whom I leave them. However trivial we might deem them now, they were heinous offences in the eyes of Laud, and Charles Chauncy was deprived of his living and placed in prison. I am sorry to remember that he was but a weak-kneed brother, and presently, finding that to him, at least, stone walls did make a prison, he submitted in the most abject manner before the mitred bigot. For this humiliation he never forgave himself. In 1637 he landed at Plymouth in New England, where he became for a short time an assistant pastor, going from thence to a town called Scituate. There he preached for several years, and then, the Puritans having triumphed over their enemies, the men of Ware besought their pastor to return. But his work now lay elsewhere. He was almost on the point of embarking for England when he was invited to become President of Harvard College — a position for which he was eminently qualified — and in November, 1654, he was installed as the second President of that now famous institution. At Harvard he laboured for the rest of his life, and dying there in 1672, was buried at New Cambridge. He was a rare and racy preacher of the old sort, whose mouth uttered quaint sayings in abundance, and who kept tongue and pen alike busy. The Plain Doctrine of the Justification of a Sinner in the Sight of God, was one of his productions — doubtless a pithy, profitable, and long discourse, which probably no man or woman now in Hertfordshire has ever read, and which rests in a few libraries in a repose almost as deep as the bones of its author.

Charles Chauncy graduated from Cambridge in 1613, and became a fellow of his college, Trinity College, and professor of Hebrew and Greek. In 1627 he was appointed Vicar of Ware, Hertfordshire, and from 1633 to 1637 vicar at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire.

Chauncy had Puritanical opinions that placed him in opposition to the church hierarchy, including its most senior member, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. He asserted in a sermon that “idolatry was admitted into the church” and he opposed, as a “snare to men’s consciences” placing a barrier – the altar rail – around the communion table. He was suspended by Archbishop Laud for refusing to perform his duty to read from the pulpit the “Book of Sports”, which set out permissible Sunday recreations. He was brought before the Court of High Commission in 1629 and again in 1634. In 1634 he was imprisoned. He made a formal recantation in 1637 which – it is said – he later regretted.

In 1638 Charles Chauncy emigrated to America. From 1638 to 1641 he was an associate pastor at Plymouth, Massachusetts. However, the Plymouth church community was dissatisfied with Chauncy’s advocacy of baptism of infants by immersion. From 1641 to 1654 he served as pastor at Scituate, Massachusetts. From 1654 until his death in 1672 he was President of Harvard College.

Charles Chauncy and his wife Catherine Chauncy nee Eyre (1604 – 1667) had six sons and at least two daughters. All six sons were said to have been “bred to the ministry and graduates of Harvard”. I have previously written about Ichabod, their third child and second son.

I think Charles Chauncy is close to the definition of a zealot: a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too. Chauncy only seemed to compromise reluctantly.

Related post

I is for Ichabod

Source

• Tompkins, Herbert W (1902). Highways and byways in Hertfordshire. Macmillan, London ; New York viewed through archive.org https://archive.org/details/highwaysandbywa03griggoog/page/n10

U is for university

St John’s College, Cambridge by Joseph Murray Ince. Watercolour. Signed and dated 1835.

 

Quite a few of my forebears studied at Oxford and Cambridge. Many of their names appear in the universities’ lists of their alumni, some in very early lists.

The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209. Oxford is older, with teaching in some form there as long ago as 1096. The University of Oxford developed rapidly from 1167, when King Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.

The earliest ancestor I have found at one of these universities is my fourteenth great grandfather Nicholas Vaux (1460 – 1523). He is listed as an Oxford alumnus. Unfortunately his college and dates of study there are not recorded.

Thomas Vaux (1509 – 1556), Nicholas’s son and my 13th great grandfather, studied at Cambridge university; again, I do not know when or which college.

When I looked at my Champion de Crespigny forebears who attended Cambridge University I found that there did not appear to be any familial loyalty to a college: all of them were at different colleges. My fourth great grandfather Charles Fox Champion Crespigny (1785 – 1875) was at Sidney College. Two of his three sons went to Cambridge. George Blicke Champion de Crespigny (1815 – 1893) went to Trinity Hall in 1832. Philip Robert Champion de Crespigny (1817 – 1889) went to Downing in 1838.

My Mainwaring forebears, by contrast, showed some degree of family loyalty to a particular college. My eighth great grandfather Edward Mainwaring (1635 – 1704) attended Christ’s College Cambridge. His son Edward (1681 – 1738) attended St John’s College Cambridge from 1699. His sons, Edward (1709 – 1795) and Henry (1710 – 1747), both also attended St John’s Cambridge.

Related post

• Champion de Crespignys at Cambridge from the earliest times to 1900

Sources

• retrieved through ancestry.com and googlebooks:
  • Venn, J. A., comp. Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900 2 Volume Set also available through Google books . Cambridge University Press, 2011
  •  Foster, Joseph. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886 and Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714. Oxford: Parker and Co., 1888-1892.

L is for Lilian

My third cousin four times removed, who was also the sister-in law of my third great uncle, was Dr Lilian Helen Alexander (1861-1934), one of the first woman doctors in Australia.

Lilian was the second of three children of Thomas Alexander (c. 1820-1888) and Jane Alexander nee Furnell (1818-1908). Their oldest daughter was Constance (1858-1913) and they also had a son, Albert Durer Alexander (1863-1933).

 

Family tree showing the Alexander and Cudmore cousin connection

 

The Alexanders lived in South Yarra. Thomas was employed as a printer for the Government but lost his job in the Victorian Government political crisis of January 1878. In 1878 and 1879 he operated a bookselling business. From 1873 Jane, Mrs Alexander, ran a Ladies’ College, which took boarders, called “Lawn House”. This began at William Street, South Yarra. From 1879 the school advertised that the principals were Mrs Alexander and the Misses Alexander: Lilian and Constance were teaching too. In 1883 the school moved from William Street – Lawn House was required by the railway – to Springfield House, 13 Murphy Street, South Yarra, later renumbered to 17.

Lilian was educated at her mother’s school and then for one year at Presbyterian Ladies’ College. In 1883 she entered the University of Melbourne as one of a small group of women who studied Arts. She was the first woman student of Trinity College. She gained her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1886 and her Master of Arts in 1888. The 1887 advertisement for the school proudly announced her achievements.

 

Advertising (1887, January 29). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 6. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11588121

 

In 1887 Lilian applied to study medicine and was one of the first women medical students at Melbourne. She obtained her Bachelor of Medicine in 1893 and her BCh (Baccalaureus Chirurgiae or Bachelor of Surgery)  in 1901.

 

First group of female medical students at the University of Melbourne, 1887. Description: Standing (l. to r.) Helen Sexton, Lilian Alexander, Annie (or Elizabeth) O’Hara. Seated (l. to r.) Clara Stone, Margaret Whyte, Grace Vale, Elizabeth (or Annie) O’Hara. Retrieved from https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/librarycollections/2011/07/12/237/

 

In 1895 Lilian was inaugural secretary of the Victorian Women’s Medical Association, and later its president. Her first appointment was at the Women’s Hospital in Carlton, and she was one of the inaugural staff members of the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, which was established in 1897.

In 1891 Lilian’s sister Constance (1858-1913) married their third cousin Milo Robert Cudmore (1852-1913). Milo was the brother of my great great grandfather James Francis Cudmore (1837-1912).

Milo and Constance had four sons:

• Francis Alexander Cudmore 1892–1956
• Ernest Osmond Cudmore 1894–1924
• Arthur Sexton Cudmore 1897–1974
• Wilfred Milo Cudmore 1899–1965

In January 1913 Constance Cudmore died at the Alexander family home in Murphy Street, South Yarra. In July, six months later, Milo also died at South Yarra. Lilian, still living at 17 Murphy Street South Yarra, assumed the care of  the four orphans,  then aged between 14 and 21.

Lilian practiced medicine until 1928. She died on 18 October 1934.

OBITUARY (1934, October 20). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 24. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10983054

 

In April 1936 Arthur Sexton Cudmore and his two surviving brothers, Francis Alexander Cudmore and Wilfred Milo Cudmore  presented a bas relief sculpture by the notable Australian sculptor Web Gilbert to the University of Melbourne in honour of their aunt Dr Lilian Helen Alexander.

The sculpture “Wheel of Life” by Web Gilbert in the foyer of the Medical Building Grattan Street, University of Melbourne.

 

Sources

• Farley Kelly, ‘Alexander, Lilian Helen (1861–1934)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/alexander-lilian-helen-12770/text23037, published first in hardcopy 2005
• Chiron : Journal of the Melbourne University Medical Society. The Society, Parkville, Vic, 1988. “The Wheel of Life” – The Alexander Memorial by Robin Orams. Volume 2, Number 1, page 35

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