Author: Johns, T.
Biography:
JOHNS, Thomas (1729/30-1797: ancestry.com)
The poet-attorney Thomas Johns of Searles Street, Plymouth, Devon, was the son of attorney Thomas Johns (d 1787) and his wife, Elizabeth (Carne) Johns. He was baptised at St Andrew, Plymouth, on 22 Jan. 1730. His father’s apprentice in 1777, Thomas Mudge, was a son of Thomas Mudge a chronometer maker, the recipient of the Longitude Award in 1793. From the late 1780s, the younger Thomas Johns was in partnership with George Leach, attorneys in Old Town Gate. Johns married Mary Hellier (q.v.) on 3 Feb. 1754 at Charles the Martyr, Plymouth. They outlived their three children. An aficionado of the theatre with his wife, most of his contributions to Poems by the Late Mr. and Mrs. Johns, of Plymouth are competent and lively paeans to actors and actresses of the Plymouth stage. The publisher of his book, Benjamin Robert Haydon of the Clarence Press, Plymouth, was the painter’s father. Johns directed his executors to collect and print his and his wife’s poetry in a volume that was not to be sold but to be distributed, gratis, to twenty-five friends named in his will. He requested that the poems be selected and arranged by his friend Dr Francis Geach, chief physician at the Royal Hospital near Plymouth, and by a friend of Hannah More (q.v.), Thomas Drewitt of Christ Church, Oxford. To more than a score of his many friends in Plymouth, Chedder, and Bath he left legacies in his will. No relationship has been established between Thomas Johns and Henry Incledon Johns (q.v.), also of Plymouth. (ancestry.com 13 Nov. 2023; CCEd 13 Nov. 2023; Alumni Oxonienses; PROB 11/1292; London Magazine 40 [1771], 513; GM 62:1 [1792] ,186; L. F. W. J. Llewellyn, History of Plymouth [1873], 2:520); W. H. K. Wright, “The Story of the Drama in Plymouth,” Western Antiquary 12:1 [July 1893], 19-20) JC
Other Names:
- Mr. Johns of Plymouth