Author: STUBBINGS, Henry Watkins
Biography:
STUBBINGS, Henry Watkins (1774-1824: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 20 Aug. 1774 at Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, the son of Henry Stubbings (1737-94) and Sarah Watkins (1738-1814), who married in 1760. Two poems in Miscellaneous Pieces (1823) record the deaths of his parents, for whom he also erected the memorial at St. Mary’s, Bletchley. Nothing is known of his education. He married Jane Hogg at Bletchley on 12 Sept. 1798. They had several children. In 1799 they moved to Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where he opened an academy or boarding-school which he ran from 1799 to 1811, educating boys between the ages of 6 and 14. He appointed Daniel Grace as assistant master and later they became partners. He dissolved the partnership with Grace and transferred the business to him in 1812. He bought a property at 14 Market Square, Winslow, in 1811 and briefly ran a bookshop and stationer’s but sold it in 1813 and moved to Newnham, Northampton, where he ran another academy and brought his sons into the business. He died on 17 Aug. 1824 and was buried in St. Mary’s, Bletchley, where there is still a grave. His wife survived him and took over the running of the academy. She remarried in 1827. In 1816 John Watkins listed three works by him: The Tutor’s Advice to his Pupils, or An Affectionate Address to the Rising Generation (1803), Five Leisure Minutes or Interesting Reflections (1806) and A Word to the Young, Occasion’d by the Death of a Child (1810), but no copies have been located (even anonymously or with variant titles). They were, however, reprinted in Miscellaneous Pieces (1823). (ancestry.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; Northampton Mercury 11 July 1801, 9 Jan. 1808, 21 Dec. 1811, 4 July 1812, 8 July 1820, 21 Aug. 1824, 7 Jan. 1826; Watkins, 335) AA