Author: Pfeil, John William
Biography:
PFEIL, John William (1799-1844: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 1 Apr. 1799 and baptised on 25 Apr. at St. George’s (German Lutheran), Little Alie Street, Goodman’s Field, London, the son of Johann Wilhelm Pfeil (1748-1809)—whose name was naturalised as John William Pfeil by Act of Parliament in 1801--a wine-merchant, and his second wife Harriet Bowman (1776-1859), who had married the previous year in West Ham, Essex (now East London). His father retired in ill health to Devon and died in 1809. His mother remarried the following year. Nothing is known of his education. He married Jane Templar Haddon from Newport, Isle of Wight, on 31 Dec. 1818 at St.Marylebone, London, with the consent of his mother since he was still a minor. They went on to have at least ten children. He followed his father into trade as a wine-merchant but moved to Hampshire and the Isle of Wight after marriage, trading in partnership with his brother Leopold Henry Pfeil (1800-31) from Southampton, Carisbrook, and Newport. The partnership was dissolved in 1828. By 1831 they were back in Southampton but continued to visit the Isle of Wight. He died on 9 May 1844 at Windsor House, Ryde, Isle of Wight, aged 45. After his death, Jane Pfeil went to live first with her son at Milbrook, Hampshire, and then with her daughter Julia in Uffington, Berkshire, where she died in 1861. The volume listed here, his only publication, consisted of gloomy undistinguished verse, including “On the Death of the Princess Charlotte of Wales.” (ancestry.co.uk 7 Oct. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 7 Oct. 2022; London Chronicle 18 Jan. 1809; Hampshire Advertiser 11 May 1844) AA