Author: Selwyn, Henry
Biography:
SELWYN, Henry (1788-1831: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 28 Jul. 1788 at Ludgershall, Wiltshire, the fourth son of Rev. John Selwyn (1753-1823), the Rector, and his wife Bridget Dyer (1754-1823), who had married at Bristol in 1777. His father and two of his elder brothers had been educated at Oxford but Henry entered government service at the military accounts department of the War Office and worked there for many years. He published Poems (1813) to which his father subscribed for twenty copies. His sister Bridget also subscribed, together with various members of his mother’s family. He married Harriet(te) Catherine Langton on 25 Nov. 1813 at Ludgershall. His father performed the ceremony and his sister Bridget was one of the witnesses. There was no issue. For most of their married life they lived in London but later moved to Bath. They were on board the paddle steamer Rothsay Castle when it foundered and broke up on the Lavan Sands in the Menai Strait on 17 Aug. 1831, carrying just over 150 passengers. Only 23 survived. Many of the bodies were washed up in Anglesey and on the North Wales coast. Their bodies were recovered and identified. Catherine Harriet (sic) was buried at Beaumaris, Anglesey, on 23 Aug. and Henry on 3 Sept. There is a memorial tablet remembering them. He had already written a will. With his parents and elder brothers dead and his sisters married, he left various bequests to his wife’s siblings. (Both his parents had died in 1823; his brother, George Brydges Selwyn, had also drowned at sea en route to England from India in 1803; his brother John died in Madras in 1810.) (ancestry.co.uk 19 Jul 2022; findmypast.co.uk 19 Jul. 2022; OUCH 4 Dec. 1813; Public Ledger 2 Sept. 1831; OJ 16 Aug., 8 Nov. 1823) AA