Author: Rack, Edmund
Biography:
RACK, Edmund (1735-1787: ODNB)
His birth, at Ellingham, Norfolk, near Attleborough, on 26 Dec. 1735, the son of a weaver, Edmund Rack, and his wife, Elizabeth, is recorded in the Norwich Society of Friends monthly meeting notes. On 19 Feb. 1768, while he was resident at Great Bradfield, Essex, he was apprenticed to William Grover, draper. On 13 Jan 1773, at the same place, he was apprenticed to a shopkeeper, Jeremy Waring. By 1775 he had settled in Bath and had begun to contribute essays on agriculture to several publications, including the Farmer’s Magazine and the Bath Chronicle. In 1777, he helped found a charitable organization “for the encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in the Counties of Somerset, Wilts, Gloucester and Dorset.” It still exists, now as the Royal Bath and West of England Society. In 1779, he was the first secretary of the Bath Philosophical Society. Following his death at Bath on 22 Feb. 1787, Richard Polwhele (q.v.) dedicated an elegy to him. He is buried in the Quaker Burial Ground, Batheaston. (ODNB 29 Apr. 2023; PRO RG 6/1212; PRO IR 1/27) JC
Other Names:
- E. Rack
- Rack