Author: Buchannan, John
Biography:
BUCHANNAN, John (1810-91: findmypast.co.uk)
He was born at East Row, near Sandsend, on 11 July 1810, the son of John Buchannan, master mariner, and his wife Sarah Arr. His father died at sea when he was very young and his mother and sisters joined the Silver Street congregationalist chapel to which he remained aligned for most of his life. (On her death in 1816, family and three members of the chapel who were the executors of her will probably undertook responsibility for his upbringing and education.) He attended the grammar school at Whitby under the Quaker John Routh, and was good friends with James Myers (q.v.) and John Watkins who also became legal clerks. He was articled to the solicitor Robert Preston in 1827 and was admitted attorney of the King’s Bench in 1833. Thereafter he practised law for many years in Whitby and also became Coroner and County Court Registrar. As a young man he was active in the literary life of Whitby, centred on the Retreat Club of largely young men from the grammar school and on the three journals, the Whitby Magazine, Whitby Panorama, and Whitby Repository (the last of which he edited for a short time, and in which he published sometimes under the pseudonym Vincent Shadewell). He issued a subscription prospectus for his poems on 23 Nov. 1827 and published them as Albert . . . and Other Poems (1828), with a second edition appearing in 1831. He married first Sarah Margaret Holt (1808-37) on 21 July 1835 at Whitby. A daughter, also Sarah Margaret, was born on 13 Feb. 1837. Her mother died shortly afterwards, presumably from childbirth complications. Buchannan then married Ann Langborne on 21 Sept. 1841 at St. Mary the Virgin, Whitby. They had three sons, one of whom died in childhood. In May 1849, after being in “a desponding state for several weeks,” she was found dead in her bedroom at Lythe Hall “under the most painful circumstances.” His daughter never married, remained at home for most of her life, and kept house for him. He died on 28 Apr. 1891 at his son’s house, Union Place, Whitby, having been received into the Roman Catholic church, and was buried next to his wife Ann, and a son, Hugh Cholmley Buchannan, at Lythe. (findmypast.co.uk 14 Apr. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 14 Apr. 2021; Spenserians; Yorkshire Herald 25 Feb. 1837; Yorkshire Gazette 2 June 1849; Whitby Gazette 1 and 8 May, 1891; Whitby Authors 180-84) AA