Author: Dobell, Samuel
Biography:
DOBELL, Samuel (1787-1842: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born probably on 10 June 1787 at Cranbrook, Kent, the eldest son and second of six children of Joseph Dobell (1760-1839), merchant and sometime Baptist minister, and his wife Elizabeth Benge (1760-1830), who had married at St. Dunstan in the West, London, in 1784. The poet and critic Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824-1874) was his nephew and the critic Bertram Dobell (1842-1914) was also directly related. Nothing is known of his education. At some stage he became a Baptist with strong Unitarian leanings and bizarrely raised objections at his marriage ceremony that it was neither sacrament nor religious rite. He married Ann Bourn (1788-1879) on 10 Sept. 1816 at Bodiam, Sussex. They went on to have eight children, four of whom predeceased him. His youngest daughter and two sons died in early Oct. 1828. His first collection, A Floweret for the Wreath of Humanity (1812) contained “The Cottage,” “The Blind Man,” “The Prison,” and “The Abolition of the Slave Trade.” It was reprinted in Miscellaneous Pieces in Poetry and Prose (1840). The later volume also contained “An Address” on his mother’s death, aged 70, on 23 Aug. 1830, which has enabled identification. He also edited Psalms, Hymns and Religious Odes (1816), published a few sermons and funeral addresses, and set out his religious principles in A Brief Description of the Principles of the Free-Thinking Christians (1824). He underwent bankruptcy proceedings as a brewer 1819-20 and was later an accountant, appraiser, and auctioneer. However, at the time of his death it was reported that “the last twenty years of his life were chequered by untoward circumstances.” He died at Cranbrook on 13 Feb. 1842. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Sept. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 21 Sept. 2022; London Gazette, various issues, 13 July 1819-22 July 1820; Pigot’s Directory of Kent [1824], 385; Kentish Weekly Post 27 Sept. 1816; MH 23 Oct. 1828; Christian Reformer Aug. 1839, 626-9; South Eastern Gazette 18 June 1839, 22 Feb. 1842) AA
Other Names:
- S. Dobell