Author: Milner, George
Biography:
MILNER, George (1802-63: ancestry.com)
The eldest of three sons of George Milner, a silk manufacturer, and his wife Sarah Storey, who had married at All Saints, Derby, on 9 May 1800, he was baptised at the same church on 11 Aug. 1802. (The couple had previously baptised a child with same name there on 27 Nov. 1800, but evidently that one died soon after.) The family was prosperous and the sons had what an obituary described as “a liberal education” but in the banking crisis of 1826 their father lost almost everything. He died at Quarndon, on the outskirts of Derby, on 11 Jan. 1829. George Jr., who had already published a volume of poems that was well received in 1821, a collection of Essays and Sketches, in Prose in 1823, and a Speechabout Byron in 1824, determined on a career as a writer. The reviews had been reasonably encouraging, with his verse described as “very pleasing” by the Evangelical Magazine. On 15 Dec. 1827 he married Ellen Manly (1803-51) at St. Alkmund’s, Derby; they had at least ten children, but several died in infancy. His second marriage was to Mary Lunn on 5 Oct. 1853 at St. Botolph, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. There do not appear to have been more children. George Milner died at his home on Gerard St., Derby, on 15 May 1863 after a long illness and his household goods were promptly auctioned off. His widow Mary married again in 1866. Milner earned local distinction as a journalist. From 1831 to 1851 he was the manager and editor of the Derby Mercury, and from 1851 to 1863 political editor of the Derby Advertiser. In the 1851 Census he gave his occupation as “Agent” and he may already by that time have been responsible for taking in and vetting advertisements and notices for the Advertiser; he was also the Derby agent for the Manchester Fire Assurance Company. The long, affectionate obituary in the Advertiser describes him as “a newspaper writer excelled by few in the provinces.” (ancestry.com 21 June 2023; findmypast.com 21 June 2023; Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 29 [1821], 172; Derbyshire Courier 2 Apr. 1853; Derbyshire Advertiser 15 May 1863, 12 June 1863)