Author: Fletcher, Caleb
Biography:
FLETCHER, Caleb (1784-1864: ancestry.com)
Although he refers to himself a man "much beyond the meridian of life" in the preface to his book (1826), he was then in his 58th year and had almost forty years to go. He describes the poem as having been written "chiefly in early life, for the author's own amusement." It is dated from his birthplace of Kirbymoorside, a market town in the North Riding of Yorkshire, where he was a grocer. Fletcher was a Quaker, the son of Caleb and Elizabeth (Masterman) Fletcher, and was born on 26 June 1784. On 23 Sept. 1811 he married Mary Eddison in Leeds. He is listed as a grocer in York in 1832. They had one son (d 1852) and at least one daughter, Mary Priscilla. The 1851 Census records Fletcher as a widower, resident in York with his unmarried daughter and his son who was his assistant in the business of spinning flax. By 1861 the son had died and the daughter had married but was still (or once again) living with her father. He died in 1864 and was buried in the Friends' Burial Ground in York. An obituary in the Friends' Annual Monitor for 1864 (65-71) quotes extracts from a spiritual diary that he kept all his life. (ancestry.com 18 Sept. 2021; findmypast.com 18 Sept. 2021) HJ