Author: Sanders, Mark
Biography:
SANDERS, Mark (1756?-1831: Memorials of the Dead in Ireland)
Some clues to this author’s identity come from the subscription list included in his book. His parents both appear there—his father as “Mark Sanders Senr” and his mother as Mrs. Sarah Sanders. The list also includes the Rev. George Philips of St. Luke’s, Dublin. The family were parishioners of the Rev. Philips. St. Luke’s, located near St. Patrick’s cathedral, was Anglican and served the population of weavers who lived in the area known as The Liberties in Dublin. Mark Sanders the elder was a silk weaver who had a shop on nearby Brabazon Row; likely the family lived at the same address. He died in 1781 and his son, also a silk weaver, took over the business. He married Mary Gunston in Jan. 1783. He is identified as a church warden at St. Luke’s in a 1789 newspaper notice. Mark Sanders died on 1 May 1831 and was buried in the cemetery at St. Luke’s. Poems seems to be his only book; the two first poems in it are by friends, James Byrne and Benjamin Gibson. (Index to Prerogative Wills of Ireland [1897]; Saunders’s Newsletter 4 Mar. 1789; Hibernian Journal 20 Jan. 1783; Memorials of the Dead in Ireland 8.303) SR