Author: Gyfford, Robert, Jr.
Biography:
GYFFORD, Robert (1766-1813: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 14 Feb. 1766 and baptised on 19 Feb. at All Hallows, Barking (by-the-Tower), City of London, the son of Robert Gyfford (1730-1806), stationer, and (presumably) his first wife, Elizabeth Howard (d 1768), who had married in St. Mary’s, North Ockenden, Essex, in 1762. Although his burial record of 1813 gives an age of 44—hence a birthdate of about 1769--and ancestry trees record him as the son of his father’s second wife, Mary Blake (they do not record the first marriage), this is less likely since the second marriage took place on 16 Dec. 1770. Elizabeth Gyfford died in Oct. 1768, so a 1769 birth by Mary Blake before marriage, although possible, is less likely. There is no record for a baptism of any date with Mary Gyfford as the mother. Nothing is known of his education and he was probably apprenticed to his father and became a stationer. His step-brother, Samuel Gyfford (1778-1856), also became a stationer and later took over the business which traded at Great Tower Street, Tower Hill. His father was elected Master of the Stationers’ Company in 1785. It may have been Robert Gyfford Jun., of Old Gravel Lane, Wapping, and not his father, who underwent bankruptcy proceedings in 1796. He married a widow, Ann Clark, on 25 Sept. 1794 at St. George’s in the East, Wapping, London. There does not appear to have been any issue. He died at Vine Court, Whitechapel, and was buried on 14 Mar. 1813 at Bunhill Fields, London. The reasons for a non-conformist burial are not known. His father was buried at Bunhill Fields in 1806 and Lyric Poems, on the Attributes of the Supreme Being (1797?), listed here, exhibits enthusiastic religious passions and may indicate a turn to Methodism. (ancestry.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; John Bowyer Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century [1858], 8: 472; Daily Advertiser 4 July 1785; London Gazette 10 Dec. 1796; GM June 1856, 665) AA