Author: Hitchins, Fortescue
Biography:
HITCHINS, Fortescue (1784-1814: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 22 Feb. 1784 at St. Hilary, Cornwall, the youngest of six children of Rev. Malachy Hitchins (1741-1809), astronomer and antiquarian, and his wife Joanna Hawkins (1739-1815), who had married at Buckland Brewer, Devonshire, in 1764. He was educated at Truro grammar school and then apprenticed to an attorney, Robert Bone of Plymouth Dock, on 23 Sept. 1800 at St. Hilary. He later practised as a solicitor first in Plymouth Dock (where he published his first volume, Visions of Memory) and later in St. Ives. His largest collection, The Sea Shore (1810), was well subscribed with many local dignitaries. It was, however, a largely undistinguished volume. Other than the lead sea-genre poem, “The Sea Shore,” perhaps only “To the Patrons of the Asylum for Female Penitents at Plymouth” and “Zimmerman’s Cottage, a Romantic retreat, near Penzance” are of interest to modern readers. The rareTears of Cornubia (1812) commemorates the loss of H.M.S. St. George, with all crew, off Jutland in Dec. 1811. He also published poems in the Royal Cornish Gazette. A prose work, The History of Cornwall, left unfinished at his death, was largely completed by Samuel Drew and only appeared in 1824. He died at Marazion on 1 Apr. 1814 and was buried at St. Hilary. He does not appear to have married. (ancestry.co.uk 9 Feb. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 9 Feb. 2022; “Hitchins, Malachy,” ODNB 9 Feb. 2022; Nicholls, Illustrations [1831], 6: 44-6; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis 1: 242-3; West-Country Poets 251-2; Royal Cornish Gazette 10 and 17 Mar. 1810; Chester Courant, 19 Apr. 1814; GM July 1814, 86) AA
Other Names:
- F. H.