Author: Dart, Henry
Biography:
DART, Henry (1806-83: findmypast.co.uk)
Nothing has ever been found about H. Dart, author of The Swallow’s Repast (1830). William Henry Kearley Wright, the knowledgeable Plymouth librarian, editor of the Western Antiquary, and author of West-Country Poets(1896), confessed that he had been unable to discover anything about him. The best candidate is probably Henry Dart who was born on 3 Nov. 1806 and baptised on 16 Nov. at Stoke Gabriel, the youngest of at least five children of Walter Dart, a bailiff, and his wife Mary Webber, who had married in 1789. Nothing is known about his education or early life. The Miss E. Dart who subscribed to his poems may have been his elder sister Eleanor but there is nothing to corroborate this. He married Keren Baker on 22 Feb. 1850 at Tormoham (Torquay). In the 1851 Census they were listed as Master and Mistress of the National School, Torquay, together with their new-born daughter, Eliza Jane. They later had a son, Henry James Dart. Dart continued to be Master at the National School for many years (assisted by three apprentices) but appears to have retired by 1871 when he is listed as a private tutor. Besides his duties as schoolmaster, he was also Secretary of the Western Hospital for Consumption at Torquay. He died at his residence, Scene Head, Marbery Road, Torquay, on 10 July 1883, and was buried at Torquay Cemetery on 13 July. Since nothing is known about him prior to his marriage, it is possible but unlikely that he was that other great romantic poet Henry Dart, convicted at Exeter on 5 Jan. 1841 of stealing twelve geese and ten ducks, who was sentenced to seven years transportation to Van Diemen’s Land and languished in the Convict Hulk Sterling Castlein the 1841 Census on 6 June 1841. (findmypast.co.uk 24 Oct. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 24 Oct. 2021; Kelly’s Directory 1856; Reports HMI of Schools [1853] 1: 256, 2: 598; LES 13 July 1883) AA
Other Names:
- H. Dart