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Author: Roberdeau, John Peter

Biography:

ROBERDEAU, John Peter (1754-1815: ODNB)

He was born on 30 Jan. 1754 and baptised on 5 Mar. at the French Huguenot church in Threadneedle Street, City of London, one of the younger sons in the large family of Isaac Roberdeau, a prosperous silk manufacturer, textile weaver, and merchant, and Louise Triquet, who had married “clandestinely” (irregularly, without banns) at Christ Church, Spitalfields, in 1731. (Both families were of French Huguenot descent and had left France in the late seventeenth century.) They lived first at Coxe’s Square, then Wood Street, and finally at 19, Prince’s Street (all Spitalfields). Nothing is known of his education although his obituary described it as “liberal.” He may have entered his father’s business. He married Mary Townley on 4 Dec. 1777 at St. Lawrence Pountney, City of London. She was the daughter of  Rev. James Townley (1714-1778), headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ school. They went on to have at least seven children. His sister, Mary, married the alderman Paul Le Mesurier, later a director of the EIC, and through his patronage Roberdeau managed to place three of his sons as writers. He continued in trade until 1796 when arthritis curtailed his activities and he took up the post of Commissary of Army Stores in Surrey and Sussex (1796-99), spending several years in Chichester. In 1805 he was one of the founders of the Library Society at Portsmouth.  The death of a son in India in 1808 occasioned his “Stanzas of Sorrow” and the deaths of two daughters in 1797 and of his wife in 1798 overshadowed his final years. He died on 7 Jan. 1815 at Chelsea and was buried on 13 Jan. at St. Luke’s. His GM obituary and Biographia Dramatica entry give a full list of his works, several of which may only have been performed but not printed. A short verse “anecdote” in one act, Cornelia, or a Roman Matron’s Jewels (written 1806) was performed at Winchester, Portsmouth, and Southampton and was later printed in The Spirit of the Public Journals for 1809(1810), 13: 206-214. (ODNB 20 Mar. 2023; DNB; “Memoir,” GM Feb. 1815, 180, and Mar. 1815, 275-6; Biographia Dramatica [1812], 1.2: 602; ancestry.co.uk 20 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 20 Mar. 2023; Bath Chronicle 9 Jan. 1815) AA

 

Books written (3):