Author: D'ALTON, Hawkins A.
Biography:
D’ALTON, Hawkins A. (1812-49: findmypast.co.uk)
All public records give his surname as Dalton but he used D’Alton for his published works. He was born in Madras (Chennai), India, the second son and youngest child of James Dalton, a surgeon with the EIC stationed in Arni and Madras, and his wife Catharine Augusta Ritso. He was baptised in Madras as Hawkins Catharine Augustus Dalton on 20 Oct. 1813, the same day as his two elder sisters and brother, Henry. The baptismal record, a contemporary transcription of the original, gives Henry’s birth date as 13 May 1813 and Hawkins’s as 13 July with no year identified. Later census records indicate that Henry was probably born in 1811. Almost certainly Hawkins was born in 1812, not 1813 as usually stated. His mother had died in Madras and her funeral was held on 13 Mar. 1813. It is not known when the family left India but James Dalton died in Carmarthen, Wales, in 1823 and his will stipulated that his estate, including property in England and India, was to be shared equally among his four children. In 1830 Hawkins Dalton was serving in the navy aboard HMS Ganges and one of his poems indicates that he also served on HMS Orestes. On 27 July 1833 he married Maria Annesley (b c. 1810) at All Souls, Regent Street, London; the record gives his parish as St. Marylebone but a newspaper announcement of the marriage describes him as “of Margate [Kent].” There were no children. Curiously, his name appears in a list of individuals charged with outlawry in April 1837 but no other details have been found. In 1845 he registered with the merchant seamen. Dalton died at King’s College hospital, London, of pneumonia on 14 Feb. 1849. Maria moved to live with her grandmother in Guernsey where she reverted to using Annesley and died in 1885. Dalton edited Clark’s Orphean Warbler (1847), a collection of songs including some by Dalton, and a companion volume, Clark’s Ciceronian Reciter (1848). His Family Record: A Magazine of Domestic Economy was issued in just one volume in 1848. (ancestry.co.uk 5 June 2024; findmypast.co.uk 5 June 2024; Morning Post 22 Dec. 1830; MH 6 May 1831; Kentish Gazette 6 Aug. 1833; Bell’s New Weekly Messenger 16 Apr. 1837; West Country Poets)