Author: ANDERSON, Thomas Ajax
Biography:
ANDERSON, Thomas Ajax (1779-1824: ancestry.co.uk)
It is not known where he was born or who his parents were. His education is also unknown. He may have been of Scottish origin. He was first recorded as an Ensign in Ceylon on 15 July 1799, in the 19th Regiment of Foot (modern-day Green Howards). He was promoted to Lieutenant on 17 Nov. 1801 and to Captain on 23 May 1807. He saw active service in Ceylon and was stationed first at Colombo and then at Trincomalee for four years. He went on leave in Oct. 1807 and returned to England where he organised the publication of Poems, Chiefly written in India (1809). He returned to Ceylon at the end of 1810. He seems to have married a woman in Ceylon around 1803, possibly Dutch, possibly named Julia, and had two daughters, Emma and Julia. Where or when his first wife died is not known. He then married Sarah Hollowell (1794-1870), from an established EIC family, on 4 May 1807 in Colombo. They went on to have a further four daughters and two sons; the sons and two of the daughters did not survive infancy. He returned to Ceylon at the end of 1810 to become commandant of Calpentyn. In 1815-16 he was commandant of the garrison at Batticoloa. The family left Ceylon in Sept. 1816 and initially settled in Chelsea where their last child was born in 1819. Back in London, he published The Wanderer in Ceylon (1817, 1819), which is rare in either edition. (He had planned the work as early as 1812, calling it Ceylon; A Poem in Three Cantos.) In 1819 he was put on half-pay and in 1821 was awarded a temporary pension of £100 for injuries sustained at Kandy in 1815.For reasons unknown, the family then moved to Cardiff where he died, aged 45, on 8 Feb. 1824 and was buried at St. John the Baptist on the 15th. Although he died with the courtesy rank of Major, his wife was left in modest circumstances and applied for a pension. She also organised the posthumous subscription publication Leave of Absence (Cardiff 1824), which contains some autobiographical material. She later remarried. (ancestry.co.uk 12 Dec. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 12 Dec. 2021; jnvieland.blogspot.com; Star 15 May 1817; Birmingham Chronicle 16 Sept. 1819; Hereford Journal 18 Feb. 1824; J. Penry Lewis, “The First Ceylon Poet--Captain Thomas Ajax Anderson.” Ceylon Antiquary 6:3 [1920-21], 142-50; Ceylon Government Gazette Apr. 1812) AA
Other Names:
- T. A. Anderson