Author: Barham, Thomas Foster
Biography:
BARHAM, Thomas Foster (1766-1844: ODNB)
The third son of Joseph Foster Barham (d 1789) and his Welsh wife Dorothea (or Dorothy) Vaughan (d 1781), he was born on 8 Oct. 1766 in Bedford and baptised on 12 Oct. in the Moravian chapel. His father had adopted Barham as his surname in 1750 in accordance with the will of his stepfather, Henry Barham, a Jamaican plantation owner. Joseph was also descended from plantation and slave owners through his mother. He visited Jamaica when he inherited two plantations, one from Henry Barham and another through his mother, but he left for England in 1751, joined the Moravians, and never returned. (His eldest son, Joseph Foster Barham, inherited the estates.) Although baptised as a non-conformist, Thomas Foster Barham was admitted to St. John’s College, Cambridge, on 28 Apr. 1784; likely he had converted to the established church before this date. He did not graduate but left Cambridge to travel in Europe before joining a mercantile house in London. On 7 Oct. 1790 he married Mary Ann Morton (d 1838), daughter of the Rev. Joshua Morton, in St. Margaret’s, Westminster; they had six (or possibly seven) children of whom two predeceased their father and four have entries in the ODNB. In 1806 the family moved from London for health reasons and settled in Leskinnick, Cornwall. He died there on 25 Feb. 1844 and was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Penzance; the memorial also commemorates his wife and erroneously gives the year of his death as 1843. His will left money to his four surviving children and included funds to publish poetry by his son William; the book, “Moskow,” was never issued. Thomas Foster Barham’s other works were Letter from a Trinitarian to an Unitarian or Socinian (1811) and musical scores including an English translation of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. (ODNB 16 Jan. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 16 Jan. 2023; ACAD; Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist [1931]; Richard S. Dunn, A Tale of Two Plantations [2014])
Other Names:
- T. F. Barham