Author: Harwood, Thomas
Biography:
HARWOOD, Thomas (1767-1842: ODNB)
He was born at Shepperton, Middlesex, Surrey, on 18 May 1767, the son of the Rev. Thomas Harwood, landowner and Rector of the parish, and his wife Anne Brown of Chertsey, who had married in 1765. Like his father, he went first to Eton and then to University College Oxford (matric. 1784). While an undergraduate he published his first play, The Death of Dion (1787), followed a year later by The Noble Slave. He left Oxford without a degree but took orders (deacon 1787, priest 1789) and became his father’s curate at Shepperton. In 1789 he enrolled at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and later received the degrees of BD (1811) and DD (1822) from Cambridge. From 1791 to 1813 he was headmaster of the grammar school at Lichfield; in 1793 he married Maria Woodward (d 1830) of Birmingham, with whom he had ten children. They settled eventually in Lichfield, where he served as Perpetual Curate of nearby Hammerwich from 1800 to 1842, and as Stipendiary Curate of Burntwood from 1828 until his death. He acted also as a magistrate and as president of the public library, and became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He wrote on many different subjects, both religious and secular: significant publications include Annotations upon Genesis (1789), Alumni Etoniensis (1797), sermons, Grecian Antiquities (1801), and History and Antiquities of Lichfield (1806). He died at Lichfield on 23 Dec. 1842 and was buried in the same vault as his wife in Hammerwich church. (ODNB 22 Feb. 2022; ancestry.com 22 Feb. 2022; ACAD; CCEd 22 Feb. 2022; Burke’s . . . Landed Gentry [1847] 1: 549)