Author: May, Robert
Biography:
MAY, Robert (1777-1847: ancestry.com)
He was born at Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, on 20 Sept. 1777 and baptised there on 2 Nov., the son of Robert and Ann (Robson) May. The details of his education are not known. He did not attend university but he became a schoolmaster. On 26 May 1800 he married Mary Appleton at Stockton and they had two daughters, only one of whom survived infancy. His charming walking tour of his birthplace, addressed as “Thou pretty, regular, improving town” in 1812, was imitated later the same year by “a lady” in The Second Part of Stockton, a Poem, brought out by the same press; she must have been a member of his circle, perhaps his wife. Mary May died at Tynemouth, Northumberland, in 1818. May’s second marriage, to Ann Bainbridge on 15 Jan. 1820 at Gateshead, Durham, produced a son, Robert, born after the family moved to Newcastle, where Ann May died in 1835. Her husband lived until 2 Jul. 1847 but died at the age of 70 in the workhouse and was buried two days later. (ancestry.com 27 Apr. 2023; findmypast.com 27 Apr. 2023; Thomas Richmond, The Local Records of Stockton and the Neighbourhood [1868], 119)
Other Names:
- R. May