Author: Ashby, Samuel
Biography:
ASHBY, Samuel (1761-1833: Copsey)
He was born on 15 Nov. 1760 at Bungay, Suffolk, and registered at Woodbridge Beccles Quaker Meeting, the sixth of seven children of John Ashby, a shopkeeper-- possibly a draper--and his wife Elizabeth Durbin, who had married in 1747. Nothing is known of his education. A manuscript note in the British Library copy of his four-page Ode on the Surrender of Paris, to the Allies (1815), in the hand of the Suffolk antiquarian David Elisha Davy, identified him as a Quaker in Bungay who “keeps a small Bookseller’s & Stationer’s Shop in Bridge Street.” Many of the subscribers to Miscellaneous Poems (1794) were from Bungay and surrounding areas and included members of his mother’s family, now “D’Urbans.” The volume contained an attack on Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man as “Paine’s and Satan’s plan.” He printed a number of his poems (c. 1803-16) as broadsides and also contributed to local newspapers under the signature Bungaiensis. He married Judith Darby on 15 Nov. 1812 at Holy Trinity, Bungay. They had at least five children. He died on 1 Oct. 1833 and was buried at Holy Trinity, Bungay. His wife survived him and died in 1847 and was also buried there. (Copsey, 1: 22-3; ancestry.co.uk 16 Jun. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 16 Jun. 2022; Ipswich Journal 30 Apr. 1814, 5 Oct. 1833; Suffolk Chronicle 21 Nov. 1812; Norwich Mercury 2 Oct. 1847; Will, Suffolk RO, 880/D/1/85/20) AA