Author: Chenevix, Richard
Biography:
CHENEVIX, Richard (1774?-1830: ODNB)
Born on 5 Apr., possibly at Dublin in 1771 (DIB) or at Ballycommon, King’s County (Offaly), in 1774 (ODNB), Richard was the only son of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Chenevix (1731-1776) and his wife, Elizabeth (1734-1772), a daughter of Colonel John Arabin (d 1757). Orphaned, he and his sister, Sarah Elizabeth (d 20 July 1841), came under the guardianship of an aunt, Susanna Magdalin Chenevix (d 1791). He was registered in 1784 at a school at Prospect, near Blackrock, and in 1785 matriculated at Glasgow University (not Dublin, as in other sources). There he gained prizes in mathematics in 1786 and 1787, but he took no degree. Twice he narrowly escaped death: in 1794 he was imprisoned during the Terror and in 1806 he survived a shipwreck on the Black Sea. During the Peace of Amiens (1802), he left France for England, but he was again detained in Paris during a trip to Germany in 1803. Called a pseudoscientist because of his interest in hypnotism and phrenology, he was, rather, an eminent chemist, mineralogist, and cryptologist, winner of the Copley Medal, contributor to Annales de Chimie and Transactions of the Royal Society and the Royal Irish Academy, and a fellow of those institutions. Chenevix contributed to the ER, QR, and the Foreign Quarterly Review. In 1812, he married a widow, Jean Françoise de Banaston (d 9 July 1836), the daughter of a lieutenant colonel of the French Royal Grenadiers. He died 5 Apr. 1830, in the 10th arrondissement. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. He left his valuable estate to his only surviving child, George “Smith” (1798-1852), born in Paris to a woman unknown. George was a surgeon in the Coldstream Guards at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. After his step-mother died, he took his father’s surname. Chenevix’s sister was a close friend of their second cousin Melesina Chenevix Trench, Richard Chenevix Trench’s mother (qq.v.). (PRO PROB 11/1774; ODNB 5 Apr. 2023; DIB 5 Apr. 2023; Pue’s Occurrences 16 Sept. 1758; Gentleman’s Almanack [1776], 61; Sanders’s News-Letter 26 Jan. 1785; Caledonian Mercury 16 May 1786, 12 Nov. 1792; St James’s Chronicle, 13 Sep. 1804; Dublin Weekly Register 24 July 1841; Zoist [1843], 58-94; W. I. Addison, Matriculation Albums … University of Glasgow [1913] and Prize Lists … University of Glasgow [1902]; W. Wagner, Abstracts of Huguenot Wills [2007], 60:375; C. Mollan, It’s Part of What We Are [2007]) JC
Other Names:
- Rich. Chenevix