Author: Hurn, David
Biography:
HURN, David (1775-1815: findmypast.co.uk)
He was born on 23 Apr. 1775 at Holbeach, the son of David Hurn and his wife Jane Clayton. The Hurn family had farmed in the area for generations. In the Preface to Rural Rhymes (1813) he writes that he was “born to the various toils of agriculture since I was able to follow the plough” and had been “habituated, from infancy, to the lonely situation of the Fens.” He married Margaret Mousley on 14 May 1801 at Gedney, Lincolnshire. They went on to have three children. He farmed around 60 acres in Holland Fen on Sir Joseph Banks’s estate. He died on 28 June 1815 and was buried two days later at Fleet Baptist with a confusing entry in the register. It gave his age as 12, his father as David Hurn, and noted he was the rural poet. This has led some sources to state that he emigrated with his elder sister, Lucy Markerly/Markillie (1772-1850), an accomplished but unpublished poet, who left England for Hudson, Ohio, in 1833 with her daughter Hannah and her husband, and other members of the Hurn / Mousley families. Despite the age given in the register, his will and newspaper death notice clearly show he died in 1815 and that it was his son who accompanied his sister to America. His wife, Margaret, who died in Dec. 1833, may have been too ill to join them but it appears her sister did so. Members of the Darley, Markerly, and Mousley families all subscribed to Rural Rhymes (1813), which contains much unremarkable verse save the topographical and autobiographical poem "On the Fens" and the political protest poem "A small, still Voice, addressed to the People of England." His poems were read by John Clare (q.v.) who referred to him several times. (findmypast.co.uk 19 Dec. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 19 Dec 2020; Lincolnshire Archives will 1815/133; Stamford Mercury 7 July 1815; Johnson, item 475; R. E. Leary, The Date Book for Lincoln and Neighbourhood. . . [1867], 298; Hudson Library and Historical Institute Ohio, Ms 624; Henry Winn, Lincolnshire Chronicle 26 June 1883; John Clare, Early Poems [1989]) AA
Other Names:
- D. Hurn