Author: BOILEAU, Alexander Henry Edmonstone
Biography:
BOILEAU, Alexander Henry Edmonstone (1807-1862: findmypast.co.uk)
He was the posthumous son of Thomas Boileau (1754-1806), a notary public, and his wife Leah Jessup (1767-1845), daughter of Lt. Col. Ebenezer Jessup of Albany NY. Thomas Boileau was likely born in Dublin; his father was Simon Boileau of that city. Boileau was born in Calcutta (Kolkota), India, on 3 Feb. 1807. He was sent to England to be educated and he is recorded as returning to India as a cadet on the EIC ship the Hythe in Jan. 1825. He and an elder brother, John Theophilus Boileau (b 1804), served with the Bengal Royal Engineers where both rose quickly through the ranks. On 3 Feb. 1834 he married Charlotte Hanson in Calcutta; their daughter Charlotte Bosanquet Boileau was born in 1835. Charlotte the mother died on 29 Apr. 1840 in Barrackpore, West Bengal. Boileau returned to England with his daughter and on 28 Aug. 1850 in Paignton, Devon, he married Matilda Grace Tovey (b 1828 in Athlone, Ireland). Their son, Henry Alexander Tovey Boileau, was born in Devon on 19 Feb. 1852 shortly before they returned to India where the boy died on 25 Dec. of the same year. They subsequently had a son and a daughter. Boileau became a colonel in the Bengal Royal Engineers on 8 June 1856 and major general on 18 Oct. 1861. He died of dysentery at Cawnpore (Kanpur) on 30 June 1862. His other publications include Personal Narrative of a Tour Through the Western States of Rajwara, in 1835 (1837) and Outline of a Series of Lectures on Iron Suspension Bridge (1842). His collected works were published as Miscellaneous Writings in Prose and Verse. (1845) and include The Siege of Bhurtpoor a Poem. The siege, where the EIC retook Bharatpore after its loss in 1805, took place in Dec. 1825-Jan. 1826 and would have been Boileau’s first major engagement after his arrival in India. (findmypast.co.uk 9 June 2025; ancestry.co.uk 9 June 2025; Calcutta Review 4 [1845], lix-lxvii; British Press 13 Jan. 1825; Homeward Mail 16 Aug. 1862) SR