Author: McNaghten, Robert Adair
Biography:
MCNAGHTEN, Robert Adair (1796-1845: ancestry.com)
He was born in Ballywillan, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, on 24 Mar. 1796, son of Samuel Alexander McNaghten of Beardville, near Coleraine. His mother’s name is not known. He was not baptised until 1812, perhaps as a condition of admission to the Bengal Army, which McNaghten entered as a cadet in 1813. Given the rank of ensign or possibly cornet on 16 Dec. 1814, he was promoted to Lieutenant on 11 Jul. 1823 and to Captain on 2 May 1826. He spent the rest of his life with the 61st Regiment of Infantry in India, with periods of leave in England. He joined a lodge of Freemasons in Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1822. Though court-martialed in 1825 and found guilty of attempting to challenge a fellow-officer to a duel and then grossly insulting him, the sentence was remitted and he returned to service. On 3 Nov. 1827 he married a young widow, Laura Henrietta (Roberts) Newport, at St. Luke’s, Chelsea, London. (Emma Roberts, q.v., was his sister-in-law.) There do not appear to have been children but after her death in Ettawah, Uttar Pradesh, India, in Oct. 1830 he married Susanna Anne Halford in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, on 21 Nov. 1832, and they had at least two children baptised in Dorset. Besides his two collections of poems he was an occasional contributor to annuals (Comic Offering, Amulet, Forget-Me-Not) between 1828 and 1835. He died on 18 May 1845 in Calcutta; officers of the regiment raised a memorial plaque in his honour in St. John’s Church there. (ancestry.com 10 May 2023; O’Donoghue; New Times [London] 16 Nov. 1825; findmypast.com 10 May 2023; Bengal Obituary [1851] 29; V. C. P. Hodson, List of Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834 [1927] 3:189) HJ
Other Names:
- Lieutenant McNaghten
- Captain McNaghten