Author: Flounders, Joseph
Biography:
FLOUNDERS, Joseph (b 1776?)
In Poetic Trifles, published in Halifax, Yorks., in 1809, Flounders reveals himself to be a young man, "unambitious." He quotes French but not classical languages, so it is unlikely that he had a grammar-school education. Several poems are addressed to women; one reflects seriously on the sudden death of a schoolteacher, the Rev. George Mounsey of Bishop Auckland, Durham, but his verses do not reveal any personal connection. He was most probably the Joseph Flounders born into the Yorkshire Quaker family of Ruth (Buck) and Joseph Flounders on 27 May 1776: his birth was registered with the Knaresborough Meeting but his birthplace may have been nearby Ripon. There was some intermarrying among his relations. He himself married Elizabeth Buck of Doncaster on 26 Jul. 1806 by licence. They had at least three daughters, all born at Huddersfield and included in the Quaker registers. He was at first in the business of thread manufacture in Huddersfield but his partnership with Thomas Beck was dissolved by mutual agreement in 1809. His next venture, the linen-drapers Flounders and Morley, went bankrupt in 1811--also in Huddersfield. Thereafter the trail goes cold. He was not the Quaker Joseph Flounders buried at Yarm in 1832, for that man was a farmer 92 years old. He might be the Joseph Flounders buried at Whitby in 1824, but that was a parish burial not associated with the Quakers. (ancestry.com 24 Sept. 2021; findmypast.com 24 Sept. 2021; Oracle and Daily Advertiser [London] 10 May 1809; Leeds Intelligencer 22 Apr. 1811) HJ