Author: MUSGRAVE, Thomas Moore
Biography:
MUSGRAVE, Thomas Moore (1774-1854: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 18 Dec. 1774 in Milk Street, City of London and baptised on 16 Apr. 1775 at St. Lawrence Jewry, the only child of Thomas Musgrave, mercer, and his wife Elizabeth Hide, who had married in Feb. 1775. After his mother’s death in 1776, his father married Ann Rait in 1781. When he died in 1788 she became her stepson’s guardian. He had a long residence overseas sometime in the 1790s and became proficient in Portuguese and German. He was at the Middle Temple 1798-1802 and became private secretary to Lord Pelham in the Home Department before being transferred to the Aliens’ Department in 1804. From 1806 to 1807 he was secretary to William Elliott at Dublin Castle. He received a pension in 1816. He was then appointed Mail Agent in Lisbon and seems to have gathered intelligence for the British government. Returning to England in 1821, he became Mail Agent at Falmouth, Cornwall, at a salary of £680 per annum. In 1822 he fathered a daughter, Ann, with an eighteen-year-old girl, Ann Parkin Edwards. He established a £100 bond and gave the child his surname; she later went to live with him. In 1825 he removed to London to become Comptroller of the Two-Penny Post and met a 20-year-old, Mary, with whom he would have four children. In 1833 he was appointed Postmaster at Bath. There is no record of a marriage although they were recorded as man and wife in the 1841 census, living at 2 Percy Place, Bath. In 1846 his eldest son, Thomas, died of consumption, followed by his 19-year-old daughter Mary in 1848. Mary Musgrave died aged 44 at Bath, and is recorded as his wife on her tombstone. In 1851 he was living with his first daughter, Ann, at 10 Edward Street, Bath. He died there on 4 Sept. 1854 and was buried in Bath Abbey. His daughter married his obituarist Jabez Rich in 1855. In addition to his translations listed here, he wrote Considerations on the Re-Establishment of an Effective Balance of Power (1813) and, according to Rich, An Enquiry into the State of Our Commercial Relations with the Northern Powers (1811)--hitherto unattributed in library catalogues. (Audrey Swindells, Thomas Moore Musgrave. Postmaster of Bath: Secret Agent [2010]; ancestry.co.uk 2 Dec. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 2 Dec. 2022; Jabez Rich, “Obituary,” Bath Chronicle 14 Sept. 1854) AA