Author: Matthiason, J. H.
Biography:
MATTHIASON, John Henry (1793-1859: findmypast.com)
The public record associated with Matthiason is unusually various but not inconsistent with changes of course in a single career. He published three works that are certainly his, two of them dated from Bedford, Bedfordshire: The Infirmary(1828); Bedford and its Environs (1831); and an address objecting to the exclusion of Unitarians, among others, from the benefits of the growing YMCA movement, The Claims of Popular Instruction (1852). The Infirmary is dedicated to John Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln from 1827 to 1853. In 1832 Matthiason was admitted Sizar at Queen’s College, Cambridge, as a “ten-year man”—a step said to have been taken on Kaye’s advice as a way of qualifying for ordination (Slinn). But he does not appear to have proceeded to a degree and in 1852 he identified himself as “formerly of the University of Cambridge” and currently the Unitarian minister of Hinckley, Leicestershire. He was born on 22 Apr. 1793 to nonconformist parents, Mary (Tucker) and John Matthiason, who had married at Plymouth Dock in 1781. He was baptised twice: at an Independent chapel in Plymouth Dock on 31 May 1793 and at St. Andrew, Plymouth Dock (C of E) on 16 Jul. 1824. His father’s occupation is given variously on later certificates as mathematician, as gentleman, and as shipbuilder. Matthiason first married Mary Cole Hodge in Hackney on 3 Jan. 1820. They had a daughter baptised at St. Andrew’s in Plymouth, where he was employed as a teacher, in 1821 and two sons baptised at Bedford in 1822 and 1825. His second marriage, as a widower, to Louisa Franklin was at St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, in 1826. They had a son baptised at Bedford in 1828. His third marriage, to Harriet Nelson, was at St. John in Thanet, Margate, Kent, on 12 Jan. 1841. At his fourth, to Anne Rodd at St. Andrew, Plymouth Dock, on 14 Apr. 1846, he gave his occupation as Civil and Military Engineer and his parish as St. Peter, Port Guernsey. In the 1851 Census, confusingly, he appears living in Chelmsford, Essex, with only his unmarried daughter Mary Cole--but his date of birth is reported as 1800, birthplace as Devonport, and occupation as “Professor of Literature.” He died in Devon and was buried on 1 Apr. 1859 at Stoke Damerel. (findmypast.com 22 Apr. 2023; ancestry.com 22 Apr. 2023; ACAD; S. Slinn, “Ambition, Anxiety, and Aspiration,” eprints.lincoln.ac.uk) HJ