Author: Coombs, Benjamin
Biography:
COOMBS, Benjamin (1796-1850: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 17 Aug. 1796 at Leather Lane, Holborn, London, the only son of six children of John Coombs and his wife Ann Sone, who had married in 1786. His birth was registered by his mother at Dr. Williams’ Library on 3 Jan. 1817 along with the births of his elder sisters Ann and Lydia. He was educated at Stepney College, a dissenting academy which opened in 1810, and spent about four years there. He was converted by the Baptist minister, Rev. Thomas Waters of Little Wild Street, Lincoln’s Inn, at about fourteen years of age and was later sent out on supply to assist in East Dereham, Norfolk. Ill health, which had already prolonged his studies, forced him to move from Norfolk to Hereford. He married Jane Addis on 21 June 1833 at Llangaren, Hereford. They had at least four children. He then became minister at Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Wales, where two of his daughters were born in the 1830s. He also advertised for pupils, offering to teach Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He then moved to Newnham, Gloucester, before settling, around 1840, at Bridport, Dorset. He died there on 4 Feb. 1850, leaving a widow and four children under the age of fourteen. (His age at death is given as 49, which might cast doubt on the birthdate.) After his death, Jane Coombs returned to Ross, Herefordshire, where she is recorded in the 1851 Census with three of the children. They emigrated to Australia for reasons unknown (possibly to accompany or join her brother Henry or other members of her family) sometime before 1854 when the burial of her daughter, Emily, was recorded on 4 Dec. at Melbourne. Jane Coombs died on 26 Jan. 1875, aged 72, at the house of her brother Henry in Lesney Street, Richmond, Melbourne. The volume listed here, Poetical Effusions (1826), consisted of twenty-two sacred sonnets which included topographical meditations on the banks of the Wye, the Avon, and at Caerphilly Castle. Other poems also ran sacred odes alongside poems on Tintern Abbey and Kirke White (q.v.). This type of mixing of Romantic locus with religious devotion often drew the ire of reviewers who objected that religious fervour should not be taken for poetic inspiration. Several poems were first contributed to the New Evangelical Magazine. He later contributed mostly sacred poems to the Baptist Magazine. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Oct. 2022; Baptist Magazine May 1850, 302-3; Gloucester Journal 16 Feb. 1850; Welshman 7 June 1833) AA