Author: Rozzell, William
Biography:
ROZZELL, William (1756-1813: findmypast.co.uk)
Younger brother of "the Leicester poet" Charles Rozzell (q.v.), he was born in 1756, the son of John Rozzell and his wife Judith Kervin, who had married on 20 Jan. 1750 at St. Mary de Castro, Leicester. He married Elizabeth Burton on 30 June 1776 in the same church and they had at least one child. She died in 1783 and on 29 Oct. 1785 he married Mary Knight, with whom he had at least two sons and a daughter. He opened a school at his house in Newark, Leicester, in Mar. 1787 but later moved to St. Martin’s Church Charity School, where he taught for over twenty years. This would have been a school for poorer children unlike the school for middle-class girls run by Hannah Linwood at Belgrave Gate which Mary Linwood (q.v.) attended. A Poetical Introduction to English Grammar (1795) was widely praised by reviewers for its light touch of a dry subject. He was buried at St. Martin’s, Leicester, on 8 Aug. 1813. The obituary in the GM misdescribed his poem as English Grammar in Verse and mentioned “some other tracts.” It is not known what these were on or if copies survived. (findmypast.co.uk 20 Jun. 2021; Northampton Mercury 29 Aug. 1795; GM Nov. 1813, 501; Duncan Patrick, The Life and Times of Charles Rozzell [2014]) AA