Author: ATKINSON, Thomas
Biography:
ATKINSON, Thomas (b 1770: ancestry.co.uk)
A preface to Atkinson’s Hibernian Eclogues gives a few details of his life and some of these can be confirmed by public records. He was born on 28 Mar. 1770 in Bishop Auckland, Durham, and baptised on 5 Apr. in St. Andrew’s church. His father, James Atkinson (b 1736), was a lieutenant in the army and distantly related to the Duke of Howard. His mother’s surname before marriage was Bellasyse; her first name is not known and no marriage record has been found. James died when Thomas was an infant and he was sent to Kirby Hill, Yorkshire, to be educated by clergymen. However, an uncle removed him from school and had him bound apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary in Newcastle. Disliking the work, Atkinson left his master and rejoined his mother who was by then severely impoverished. They set off for Dublin in 1789, hoping to claim a property, inherited through James Atkinson’s family. It was not to be: Atkinson could not inherit until he came of age and he and his mother were stranded in Dublin with no property and no income. Hibernian Eclogues was published by subscription but it does not include a subscribers’ list. Atkinson’s second book of verse, A Poetical Epistle, was issued in London in the same year and it seems likely that he returned to England. Nothing more is known and no further trace of him has been located. (ancestry.co.uk 23 Jan. 2025; findmypast.co.uk 23 Jan. 2025; Thomas Atkinson, Hibernian Eclogues [1791]) SR