Author: LEE, Thomas
Biography:
LEE, Thomas (1759-1810: findmypast.com)
Lee himself helpfully included an autobiographical preface in his one known publication, Poetical Essays (1795). He was by his own account a “humble Mechanic,” born in 1759 in Blidworth, Nottinghamshire. His father was a framework knitter and he learnt the trade, using his first earnings to add evening-school lessons in writing and arithmetic to the basic education he had had from his parents and elder brothers. He practised his literary skills in love-poems before his marriage, but after starting a family he felt the urge to apply them to the work of evangelising. Public records support his story. He was the son of Joseph and Ann (Gibson) Lee, who had married in 1744; he was baptised at St. Mary of the Purification, Blidworth, on 16 Apr. 1759. He settled at Arnold, on the outskirts of Nottingham, and married Ann Sanders at her parish church of St. Mary, Nottingham, on 28 Mar. 1785. They had ten children, some of the later births recorded as Wesleyans in the non-conformist register. He died at Arnold and was buried at St. Mary’s (Anglican) there on 15 Apr. 1810. (Thomas Lee, “Preface,” Poetical Essays [1795]; findmypast.com 23 Dec. 2023; ancestry.com 23 Dec. 2023) HJ