Author: Millard, Simeon Warner
Biography:
MILLARD, Simeon Warner (1778-1839: ancestry.com)
John and Anna (Elkington) Millard, the parents of this learned eccentric, were Quakers, his father a well known clockmaker. He was born on 4 Nov. 1778 at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire but was still under age when his parents died—his mother in 1788 and his father in 1792. It is not known who became temporarily his guardian but he was apprenticed in 1795 to an ironmonger in Henley upon Thames, Oxfordshire, and then, when that proved not to suit him, to a maltster at Stourbridge, Worcester, where he stayed only a few months. At Chipping Norton, Oxford, he is said to have jilted a young woman whom he paid off to avoid an action for breach of promise; he never married. Millard had inherited property in Tewkesbury, where in 1802 he helped to establish a “permanent library” with himself as librarian, only to start a fire by reading in bed. He developed an enthusiasm for natural history and made some collecting tours in Wales. After a health scare in 1805, he exchanged several properties for life annuities, thus securing an income sufficient to his needs for the rest of his life. He moved to Southville, Bedminster, near Bristol in Somerset, and devoted himself to study and collecting. The Introduction to his only published work alludes to “ill health” and “confined circumstances.” He died at Southville on 8 Oct. 1839 and was buried on 14 Oct. at St. John the Baptist, Bedminster. His “cabinet of insects,” sold at auction shortly after his death, was considered “equal to any private collection in England” (Bristol Times). (ancestry.com 13 June 2023; findmypast.com 13 June 2023; Tewkesbury Yearly Register and Magazine, 1830-1850 1 [1840]: 414-16; Bristol Times and Mirror 19 Oct. 1839)
Other Names:
- S. M. Warner