S is for Shrewsbury

My fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823) was born in Charleston, near Boston, Massachusetts to Richard Dana (1700 – 1772), a lawyer and a prominent local politician, and Lydia Dana nee Trowbridge (1710 – 1776). He was their second child.

Edmund entered Harvard in 1756 and graduated in 1759. After a brief apprenticeship with a local doctor, he travelled to England, never to return. By 1764 he was at Edinburgh, perhaps he was studying medicine and science at the university.

The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823) A miniature in the possession of my father.

 

At Edinburgh Edmund Dana met the Hon. Helen Kinnaird (abt. 1749 – 1795), daughter of Charles (1723-1767), sixth Baron Kinnaird of Inchture, and his wife Barbara Kinnaird nee Johnstone (1723 – 1765). Edmund and Helen were married on 9 July 1765 at the church of St Cuthbert in Leith, Edinburgh’s port, a few miles from the city.

The couple moved to London where their first three children were born.

On 18 December 1768, at a ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Whitehall, Edmund was ordained a deacon of the Church of England. Two months later he was made a priest and appointed as Vicar of Brigstock Northamptonshire with the chapel of Stanion in the Diocese of Peterborough.

In a letter to his father Richard, written soon after his appointment to Brigstock he explained his new situation and his decision to abandon his medical studies:

My living has been magnified beyond measure, but I have great privileges in it [wh[ich] no other person ever had upon acc[oun]t of its being upon an Estate of Mr Pulteney. I really understood before I took the gown that whatever deficiencys it labor[e]d under Mr Pulteney w[oul]d make good.

In effect, therefore, Edmund had accepted the assurances of his wife’s family, notably of his wife’s uncle William [Johnstone] Pulteney (1729 – 1805), that a career in the church would be assured and well paid. The parish of Brigstock itself was controlled by the Crown through the Bishop of Peterborough, but Edmund’s letter indicates that the land was owned by William Pulteney and that his basic salary would be supplemented. Given the influence of his wealth and position, it would not have been difficult for Pulteney to persuade the bishop to find a place for his niece’s husband.

In November 1772 the Reverend Edmund Dana took up new duties as Vicar of the parish of Wroxeter in Shropshire, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Wroxeter is a village five miles east of Shrewsbury. William Pulteney had first entered Parliament in 1768 as member for Cromartyshire in Scotland, but he had substantial interests in Shropshire and had also contested the seat of Shrewsbury. Successful at the 1775 election, he held the borough until his death in 1805. Because of the property William Pulteney held, he was patron of several livings in the area: that is, he had authority to name the priest who would head the parish as rector or vicar. The previous incumbent at Wroxeter, Robert Cartwright, had died, and the vacancy was free for Pulteney to nominate his nephew by marriage.

Edmund Dana and his family  settled in the region of Shrewsbury, and William Pulteney continued his support. In 1775 the living of Aston Botterell became vacant through the death of the former Rector Nehemiah Tonks, and Edmund Dana was appointed his successor.

In 1781 Edmund Dana received two further appointments as Rector: to Harley and Eaton Constantine. Both parishes were in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield and both lay southeast of Shrewsbury, Eaton Constantine just two miles from Wroxeter and Harley a couple of miles further. The livings were formally in the gift of a certain John Newport, but Newport was under age and William Pulteney was his official guardian.

Helen continued to bear children: thirteen, nine girls and four boys, in twenty-one years. Three died in infancy. Helen died at Shrewsbury on 17 April 1795, aged about forty-five, and was buried at Wroxeter on 22 April. She and Edmund were married three months short of thirty years; he did not marry again.

Though Edmund Dana had no previous contact with Shropshire, the patronage of William Pulteney gave some status to the newcomer. Wroxeter is a notable parish: a short distance east of Shrewsbury, it occupies the site of the ancient Roman town of Uriconium. Some time after his arrival, Edmund Dana became a local magistrate.

An early supporter of the great engineer Thomas Telford, William Pulteney arranged for him to work on the refurbishment of Shrewsbury Castle during the 1780s, and a few years later had him appointed Surveyor of Public Works for the county, where he constructed roads, bridges and canals. Edmund Dana was a member of the trust concerned with roads and streets, so the two men were at least acquaintances. When Telford was commissioned to construct a new prison in the city, close to the castle, Dana had Telford construct a passage from the castle, across the line of the present-day railway, to the main entrance of the prison and then some distance along the River Severn. The route became known as The Dana, and local custom applied the same name to the prison itself.

Lancasterian School with Castle and Dana path. Before construction of the Railway Station in 1848. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/125). Image sy8896

Former HM Prison Shrewsbury viewed across the road named The Dana at the end of May 2014. The prison constructed during 1787-1793, closed in March 2013.

 

Some sources claim that Edmund Dana lived in Castle Gates House, close to the entrance to the castle, and it is possible that for a while he did. From the time that he arrived there, however, all his children were born and baptised at Wroxeter, and his wife Helen died and was buried there.

abbreviated family tree showing William Pulteney, Helen Kinnaird, Edmund Dana, William Pulteney Dana (his son who was jailed),  granddaughter Anna, and great- nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr

 

In 1856 Edmund’s great-nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr (1815 – 1882), grandson of Edmund’s brother Francis, visited England and spent three days at Shrewsbury. On the first day he met his cousin Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana (1814 – 1890), Edmund’s grand-daughter. Anna’s husband William Henry Wood escorted him on a tour of the city. Richard Dana was shown the Dana Terrace, “principal walk of the castle, and named from the Rev Edmund Dana, who planned it.” He also saw an old house with black timber cross-beams, where the future King Henry VII was said to have spend the night on his way to defeat Richard III at Bosworth in 1485. There was no mention, however, of Edmund Dana living in the city and, since Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana was nine years old and living near Shrewsbury when her grandfather Edmund died in 1823, she probably would have remembered it if he had.

Richard Henry Dana’s diary entry for the following day, Sunday 10 August, records how he accompanied Mr and Mrs Wood to Wroxeter, where they attended the evening service. In somewhat romantic style, he tells how:

Wroxeter is a fair specimen of the old English parish Church, parsonage and village. . . The church stands in the midst of the graves of the villagers, and the vicarage opens into the Church Yard. In this vicarage, lived and died, Edmund Dana, my grandfather’s only brother. Here he officiated from 1766 to 1823 – a period of fifty seven years. Here he brought his beautiful noble bride, a peer’s daughter, in the bloom of her charm, and here he laid her, under the stone of the chancel, at middle life, the mother of twelve children, loved and honoured by all. Here he lies by her side, and here most of this children are buried. . . . . Here grew up, here played, here walked and studied, and loved, and married, those beautiful daughters, whom Mrs President Adams [ Abigail Adams nee Smith] says were the most elegant women she saw in England, and whom George III called the roses of his court.

He goes on to describe the church itself, with the tombs of Edmund Dana, his wife Helen, and several of their children, placed before the chancel.

Wroxeter Church, Shropshire. Watercolour. Artist: J. Homes Smith. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/071/40) image sy1325

Richard Henry Dana remarked that the Wroxeter local bridge, a Roman column in the churchyard, and several trees were named in memory of Edmund Dana who had died 33 years earlier, while the old people of the parish still call him the “old gentleman”, and look upon the present rector, who has been here twenty years, as the “new vicar”, and complain of his innovations.

Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford Retrieved from Wikipedia. Original from the Victor von Gegerfelt collection, Volume K 1:3, Region- och Stadsarkivet Göteborg.

Related posts

• J is for jail: Bankruptcy of William Pulteney Dana

Sources

• research by my father, Rafe de Crespigny
• Dana, Richard Henry, Jr and Lucid, Robert F. (Robert Francis),1930-, (ed.) The journal. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968.
• Thorne, R.G. “PULTENEY, William (1729-1805), of Westerhall, Dumfries and The Castle, Shrewsbury.” History of Parliament Online, The History of Parliament Trust, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/pulteney-william-1729-1805.
• http://shrewsburylocalhistory.org.uk/street-names/the-dana

Jacobites in skirts

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of Mr Toad escaping prison dressed as a washerwoman from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

In The Wind in the Willows the irrepressible Mr Toad escapes from gaol by dressing as a washerwoman. My 7th great aunt Margaret Lady Ogilvy is said to have escaped from Edinburgh Castle, where she had been confined after the failure of the ’45, in much the same way, disguised as a washerwoman.

It happened like this.

Margaret (1724-1757) was one of 14 children of my seventh great grandparents Sir James Johnstone (1697-1772) and his wife Barbara née Murray (1703-1773). In 1745 Margaret married David, Lord Ogilvy (1725-1803), who had raised a regiment in support of the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart. Margaret accompanied her husband during the rebellion.

Ogilvy’s clansmen were cut to shreds at Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, and in the aftermath Margaret Lady Ogilvy was captured and kept at Edinburgh Castle. In November 1746 she escaped, “disguised as a washerwoman”.

Margaret Ogilvy made her way to France where she was reunited with her husband, who had survived Culloden and fled to Paris. He later became a general in the forces of the French king.

Margaret, Lady Ogilvy from “Illustrations of people and events relating to the Jacobite Rebellions in Scottish history (1715 and 1745-46)” in the collection of the National Library of Scotland

So the story goes, but it is suspiciously similar to a tale told about David Ogilvy. He too had been captured after the failure of Culloden and is said to have escaped St Andrews Castle dressed as a woman, in his sister’s clothes.

My sixth great grandfather, Charles Kinnaird (1723-1767), brother-in-law of Margaret Ogilvy née Johnstone was also imprisoned during the rebellion. In November 1745 Kinnaird was committed to prison by the solicitor of His Majesty George II for holding treasonable correspondence with the Highlanders at Carlisle, but was released a few weeks later on 19 December 1745. He is described in family stories as having “eaten his commission in prison”, destroying in this way the documents and correspondence he was carrying. Kinnaird was imprisoned with Walter Scott, a  servant of his future father-in-law, Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, Dumfries.

In 1748 Charles Kinnaird married Barbara Johnstone (1723-1765), Margaret’s sister. I am descended from Charles and Barbara Kinnaird through Charlotte Dana (1820-1904), my third great grandmother.

References

• Rothschild, Emma The inner life of empires : an eighteenth-century history. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock, 2011. Page 318. Note 28 refers to the imprisonment of Charles Kinnaird and Lady Ogilvie and states The family stories “of Lord Kinnaird eating his commission in prison—Of Westerhall being a refuge for the fugitives & of Lady Ogilvie’s escape”—were recounted by Betty Johnstone, many years later, to her great-niece Elizabeth Caroline Johnstone.
• Bernard Burke (1854). Family romance: or, Episodes in the domestic annals of the aristocracy. Hurst and Blackett. pp. 264–274
• Stamford Mercury 26 June 1746 page 3 retrieved from FindMyPast.com.au quoting a letter from Edinburgh dated June 16: “Yesterday Lady Ogilvy, who attended her husband, and was remarkably active in the present Rebellion, was brought to this Place by a Party of Soldiers, and confined in the Castle.”
• Newcastle Courant 22 November 1746 page 3 retrieved from FindMyPast quoting a letter from Edinburgh dated November 24 : “The Lady Ogilvie made her Escape last Friday [18 November] from the Castle.”
• Walton, Geri. “Daring Escape of Jacobite Woman Lady Margaret Ogilvy.” Geri Walton unique histories from the 18th and 19th centuries. November 10, 2017.  https://www.geriwalton.com/daring-escape-jacobite-woman-lady-margaret-ogilvy/.
• The Scots Magazine 7 March 1757 page 53 retrieved from FindMyPast : “Lately in France, in the 32nd year of her age, Mrs Margaret Johnston, wife of Lord Ogilvie, leaving issue one son and two daughters. This lady’s husband is the lineal heir  of the family of Airly, became attainted in 1746 [viii, 269.] and is colonel of a regiment in the French service.”
• Ogilvy David, entry in the Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900 vol 42 by  Thomas Finlayson Henderson, transcribed at Wikisource
• Charles Jobson Lyon (1843). History of St. Andrews: Episcopal, Monastic, Academic, and Civil, Comprising the Principal Part of the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, from the Earliest Age Till the Present Time. W. Tait. pp. 32–33 states David Ogilvy dressed himself in the clothes of one of his tiers and escaped disguised as a woman.
• Stamford Mercury 12 December 1745 page 2 retrieved from FindMyPast.com.au quoting a letter from Edinburgh dated November 28 about the imprisonment of Charles Kinnaird

Related posts

• I have previously written of the role Edward Mainwaring, my 6th great grandfather, played in repelling the Jacobite rising of 1745

20 June 1756 Black Hole of Calcutta

On 20 June 1756 Patrick Johnston(e) (1737-1756), my 7th great uncle, died in the prison of the Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah, later known as the “Black Hole of Calcutta” in India.

Three years previously, at the age of sixteen, Patrick had joined the East India Company as an accountant. He was eighteen when he died.

Memorial to the victims, St John’s Church Calcutta Photograph in 2011 by Pdr123 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Patrick’s name is listed on a memorial to victims.

One of the prisoners, J. Z. Holwell, wrote an account of the incident. He reported that 146 were imprisoned and in a room only 4.30m. x 5.50 m (14 feet x 18 feet) 123 died overnight from overcrowding. It is suggested that Howell exaggerated these numbers and that probably only 69 men were imprisoned. Howell listed P. [Patrick] Johnston in his account.

Patrick was the thirteenth of the fourteen children of Sir James Johnston.

In 1753 Patrick Johnstone petitioned to be admitted as a writer, that is, a junior clerk, in the East India Company and on 31 October 1753 he was approved as a writer for Bengal.

In his petition to join the company Patrick stated that he had been “educated in writing and Accompts,” and he presented a certificate showing he had undergone “a complete course of Mathematick and Book keeping” with a teacher in Edinburgh.

Also at the age of sixteen, Patrick’s older brother John (1734-1795) had been admitted as a writer in 1750.  Two of John’s maternal uncles gave their security for his appointment. John’s teacher in Edinburgh certified his capacity to be able to discharge his duties as a clerk. John arrived in India in 1751.

Patrick’s appointment in 1753 was on the security of two London merchants: Peter Linehup of St George’s Hanover Square and Alexander Grant of London, Merchant. Lord Elibank, the brothers’ maternal uncle, seems to have declined to provide security for Patrick. Lord Elibank had previously provided security for Patrick’s older brother John.

From 1741–1846 the East India Company required a bond for faithful service. Becoming a Writer was the passport to great riches but riches were not always acquired without dubious dealing and corruption. A young man who survived ten years, exiled in a trying and dangerous climate, expected to go home rich and the East India Company allowed leeway for creative personal trading as long as its own profits were not affected.

In September 1755 Patrick wrote to his brother William (1729-1805):

My very worthy brother Johny & I are trying to establish & carry on a Good Trade Tho We want Money to make it an extensive one. (Rothschild, The inner life of empires, page 27)

When the fighting began in 1756 in the so-called ‘Carnatic Wars’, a three-way conflict between the local rulers of the Moghul Empire and the French and British East India Companies, John and Patrick were captured. Patrick was imprisoned and died. John, however, was in Dhaka in East Bengal, and was released into the custody of the French.

John later fought in the 1757 battle of Plassey in which the British East India Company under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal.

Further reading

• A short analysis of the incident http://murshidabad.net/history/history-topic-black-hole.htm
• Rothschild, Emma The inner life of empires : an eighteenth-century history. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock, 2011.
• A guide to St John’s Church, Kolkata: https://indianvagabond.com/2017/06/05/st-johns-church-kolkata-a-complete-guide/

Family stories

LIn the fifth week of Shauna Hicks’s series of blog posts about genealogical records the topic is family stories.

Before we had computer databases, family history was largely passed down by stories.  For example, my mother-in-law had a very clear idea of who her forebears were for several generations and was able to give brief outlines of their lives for ancestors back to the early nineteenth century from the top of her head. I have been able to verify the family history with records, and what she set out for me from memory was remarkably accurate.

On my side of the family, several relations have written family history books thereby preserving many family stories.

My father wrote Champions of Normandy which covers the early history of the Champion de Crespigny family to the time they migrated to England at the end of the seventeenth century.  Among other documents, it is based on a number of manuscripts held by different family members, as well as the registration of the family with the College of Arms in 1697. (de Crespigny, Rafe Champions in Normandy: being some remarks on the early history of the Champion de Crespigny family. R. de Crespigny, Canberra, 1988.)

My third cousin twice removed, Stephen de Crespigny, has gathered an enormous amount of family history. He collected information, documents and stories, but also had drawn up a comprehensive family tree in the early 1990s.

One of the three sheets of the Champion de Crespigny family tree compiled by Stephen de Crespigny

 

Helen Hudson née  Hughes (1915 – 2005) my first cousin twice removed, was an enthusiastic family historian.  She compiled a book, Cherry Stones,  covering her forebears (which coincide with my father’s father’s mother’s family). I have found it a useful resource and am very pleased she wrote it.  It was published in 1985 and is an amazing effort considering she too had no computer database or access to the material we now have through the internet.  Helen’s father Reginald Hawkins Hughes (1886 – 1971), brother of my great grandmother, had collected papers and paraphernalia of his ancestors and kept it in what she called a “tin trunk” which Helen inherited.  The book has much original material such as transcriptions of early letters. (Hudson, Helen Lesley Cherry stones : adventures in genealogy of Taylor, Hutcheson, Hawkins of Scotland, Plaisted, Green, Hughes of England and Wales … who immigrated to Australia between 1822 and 1850. H.L. Hudson, [Berwick] Vic, 1985.)

My great great great grandfather Philip Chauncy wrote  memoirs of his sister and his second wife.  These were republished in 1976. (Chauncy, Philip Lamothe Snell Memoirs of Mrs Poole and Mrs Chauncy. Lowden, Kilmore, Vic, 1976.) The State Library of Victoria also holds a manuscript of his journal of his trip to Australia and other family history and biographical notes he made.

My Great grand uncle James Gordon Cavenagh-Mainwaring (1865 – 1938) wrote a history of the Mainwaring family back to the entry of Whitmore estate in the Domesday Book of 1068. (Cavenagh-Mainwaring, James Gordon The Mainwarings of Whitmore and Biddulph in the County of Stafford. An account of the family, and its connections by marriage and descent; with special reference to the Manor of Whitmore. J.G. Cavenagh-Mainwaring, about 1935.) The estate of Whitmore where my cousins now live has never been sold since the entry in the Domesday book but always been transferred through inheritance, albeit sometimes through the female line.

More recently the wife of my father’s cousin, Christine Cavenagh-Mainwaring, has produced an updated  history of Whitmore and the family. (Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Christine and Britton, Heather, (editor.) Whitmore Hall : from 1066 to Waltzing Matilda. Adelaide Peacock Publications, 2013. ) I was very pleased to be given a copy of the book by Guy and Christine when I saw them in Adelaide last month.

Christine provides an update on what happened to Gerald Mainwaring (1854 – ?) though she also has not been able to trace what happened to him eventually.  My blog entry deals with him being tried for murder but he was not hanged as the jury effectively cast a ballot to decide his fate. His sentence was commuted to penal servitude. Apparently he was released on licence on May 16, 1894. The family story is that Gerald made his way to Whitmore where his brother Percy (1857 – 1927), the Rector of Whitmore, would not let him into the house, gave him a five pound note and an overcoat and sent him away.  Perhaps Gerald changed his name and returned to Canada. There seems no record of him after that time.

There are lots of other family stories in Christine’s book to follow up on and to research further.

In the 1990s James Kenneth Cudmore (1926 – 2013), my second cousin once removed, of Quirindi New South Wales, commissioned Elsie Ritchie to write the Cudmore family history. The work built on the family history efforts of many family members.  It was published in 2000.  It is a very large and comprehensive work and includes many many Cudmore family stories. (Ritchie, Elsie B. (Elsie Barbara) For the love of the land: the history of the Cudmore family. E. Ritchie, [Ermington, N.S.W.], 2000.)

A collection of family history books.

 

Emma Rothschild, a Professor of History at Harvard University, has studied the Johnstone family in a scholarly history of the eighteenth century in order to gain an insight into the development of the British Empire.  Barbara Johnstone (1723 – 1765) was my sixth great grandmother and it is she and her siblings who are the subject of this book. The source material included the oldest brother’s letter book which was in an Edinburgh library. (Rothschild, Emma The inner life of empires : an eighteenth-century history. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock, 2011.  Book review: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-inner-life-of-empires-by-emma-rothschild-2347490.html)

Among other stories, I learned from the book that in 1759 Barbara separated from her husband Charles Kinnaird (1723 – 1767). He had succeeded to the barony in the peerage of Scotland as 6th Lord Kinnaird in 1758. Barbara awarded £130 per year and £100 pounds for furniture. She did not have access to her children. Her husband stated she had committed no crime other than ill nature.

Barbara, Baroness Kinnaird by Allan Ramsay, 1748 portrait retrieved from http://thepeerage.com/p3036.htm . Barbara Johnstone was the daughter of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Bt. and Barbara Murray. She married Charles Kinnaird, 6th Baron Kinnaird, son of George Kinnaird and Lady Helen Gordon. She died on 21 October 1765

It is a bit intimidating when so much family history has been written to attempt one’s own study.  However, I have found plenty more family history to research while enjoying the stories published by others.