Author: Colquitt, William
Biography:
COLQUITT, William (1753-1827: Axon)
He was born on 27 Jul. 1753 at Liverpool and baptised on 13 Aug. at St. Nicholas, the fourth of perhaps ten children of Scrope Colquitt (1719-1800), common councillor, bailiff, and customs officer, and his wife Elizabeth Goodwin, who had married in 1744. They lived at Mount Pleasant, already a comfortable residential area, later made famous by the Roscoe family (qq.v.) and others. Other members of the family were also linked to the customs in Liverpool, England’s second port, and acquired considerable wealth in the process. His father was an early subscriber to the Liverpool Infirmary and various members of the family were active in philanthropy, particularly in schools for the blind. He was educated at Liverpool School and Christ’s College, Cambridge (matric. 1776, BA 1781). He does not seem to have followed a profession and lived for many years as a “Gentleman” in Chester. He died, unmarried, at Chester in Jan. 1827 and left his considerable wealth of well over ten thousand pounds to his siblings and nephews and nieces. Apart from his collection of poems listed here, which are mostly of interest for their descriptions of the city and institutions of Liverpool, he published Essays on Geology and Astronomy (1825) and was a contributor to the GM. (Ernest Axon, ed., “The Colquitt family of Liverpool” in Bye-Gone Lancashire [1892], 146-56; Chester Chronicle 19 Jan. 1827; ancestry.co.uk 22 Jun. 2022) AA