Author: Styles, Robert
Biography:
STYLES, Robert (1800-54: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 15 Sept. and baptised 13 Oct. 1800 at Lower Street, Islington, London (Independent), one of seventeen children of John Styles, a carpenter and coffin-maker, and his wife Mary Wharton, who had married in Norwich in 1778. Nothing is known about his education but he probably went to a dissenting academy. (His elder brother John went to Hoxton and Gosport.) He married Elizabeth Dunhill on 30 Sept. 1823 at St. Marylebone. They had two daughters and a son. Elizabeth Styles died in 1832. He then married Mary Ann (Ordish) Bolden, a widow, on 19 Sept. 1833 at St. Dunstan’s in the East. A daughter, Mary Ordish, was born on 19 Sept. 1834 and baptised by her uncle John Styles DD (1782-1849), on 12 Nov. at Holland Chapel, Brixton Road (Independent). Robert Styles' poem "On the Birth of My Daughter Mary" is one of the keys to his identification. Her baptism records the family’s residence as 10 Denmark Row, Camberwell, from where he signed the preface to Poems (1835). By 1841 the family had moved to 444 Strand with his occupation given as accountant. In 1839, the British Colonial Bank and Loan Company had been formed for the specific purpose of providing capital to Australasia. Styles became the General Manager at its offices in Moorgate Street. He emigrated to Australia, unassisted, on bank business, with his second wife Mary Ann; three daughters, Eliza, Emma, and Mary; and his stepson Charles Bolden, and arrived at Port Jackson, New South Wales, on 10 Sept. 1844. In Australia he was Secretary of the Australasian, Colonial, and General Life Assurance and Annuity Company from January 1845 until his death. From 1848 to 1852, he lived at Pyrmont, Sydney and from 1853 until his death on 25 October 1854 at Balmain, with his occupation given as accountant and late Secretary to the Liverpool London Insurance Company. It is not known if he published anything in Australia. Poems (1835) received mild praise in reviews but is notable for poems on "Catholic Emancipation" and "On the Death of S. T. Coleridge." (ancestry.co.uk 20 Jan. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 20 Jan. 2022; "The Rev. John Styles, D.D." in The Living Preachers’ Portrait Gallery [1842]; Dissenting Academies Online; Sydney Morning Herald 27 Oct. 1854, 19 Mar. 1861; Morning Post 12 Jul. 1839; London Gazette [various issues]; W. H. Wells, A Geographical Dictionary; or Gazetteer of the Australian Colonies [1848]) AA