Author: Bristow, John Charles
Biography:
BRISTOW, John Charles (1784-1856: findmypast.co.uk)
He was probably born in late 1784 and was baptised on 13 Jan. 1785 at Calcutta, the son of John Bristow (1750-1802) of the East India Army, Bengal, later senior merchant and President of the Board of Trade, Calcutta, and his wife Amelia/Emilia Wrangham (1762-1819), who had married on 27 May 1782 at Chinsurah, West Bengal. His mother was the daughter of William Wrangham, on the Council of St. Helena. His father had earlier had two sons and two daughters with Mahondy Khanum, a Muslim woman from Patna, Bahar. It is quite possible they married in a Muslim ceremony around 1774. He later abandoned her but made provision for her in his will. He went on to have three more daughters and John Charles, his only "legitimate" and therefore eldest son and heir, with Amelia/Emilia Wrangham. John Charles went to Christchurch, Oxford (matric. Oct. 1800) but does not appear to have proceeded to a degree. He married Sophia Anne Richardson, from an East India Company family, on 30 Mar. 1812 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London. They had two daughters and a son. She died in 1836 and he then married Mary Ann Thielle Bourchier on 10 Oct. 1843 at St. Martin’s in the Fields, Westminster, with whom he had another three children. Shortly after his first marriage, he purchased Eusemere Hill, Ullswater, from the Earl of Lonsdale and may also have owned the large house built there by the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in 1794. Although he travelled extensively in Europe, Eusemere Hill remained his home until his death. In addition to Ullsmere (1835), a long topographical poem, strangely forgotten, he published Travels and Tales (1841) consisting of more topographical verse, including many sonnets, on various parts of Britain. He continued to write and assembled his Poetical Works (6 vols 1848-53), which contained a considerable body of unpublished work: topographical verse of his European tours; odes; elegies; romantic, historical, and legendary tales; dramas; and much else, in total just over 2000 pages of verse which have never been properly assessed. Of independent means, deeply influenced by Coleridge and Wordsworth (qq.v.), he printed some of his later verse for private circulation but seems not to have had much contact with the literary world of his day. He died on 18 Sept. 1856. (findmypast.co.uk 29 Oct. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 29 Oct. 2021; Oxford Journal 4 Apr. 1812; Carlisle Journal 19 Nov. 1836; London Evening Standard, 23 Oct. 1843; Morning Herald 22 Sept. 1856) AA
Other Names:
- John C. Bristow