Author: Macray, John
Biography:
MACRAY, John (1796-1878: ancestry.co.uk)
Although census records give his year of birth as 1796, he may have been the John Macray, son of John Macray and his wife Elizabeth Courage, who was baptised at St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, on 21 Oct. 1795. He moved to London where he worked for Treuttel and Wurtz, foreign booksellers in Soho Square. On 17 Oct. 1822 he married Ann Downs Parish (b 1791) at St. Pancras; they had at least one son, William. By the time of the 1841 Census they had moved to Oxford and were living in St. Clement, Headington. In 1847 he was made the first librarian of the Taylorian Institution and he served in that role until 1871. After Ann's death, he married Octavia Maxted (b 1829) at St. Thomas's, Portman Square, London, on 3 Nov. 1867. The marriage record gives his father's name as John and identifies him as a leather merchant. Macray died on 13 Aug. 1878, leaving an estate of under £100. (Margaret Belcher, ed. Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin [2001]; ancestry.co.uk 29 Apr. 2025; findmypast.co.uk 29 Apr. 2025) SR