Author: Terrot, Charles H.
Biography:
TERROT, Charles Hughes (1790-1872: ODNB)
He was of Huguenot descent through both parents and was born at Cuddalore, India, where his father, Elias Terrot, was a captain in the Indian army. His father died in 1791 at the siege of Bangalore and Charles’s mother, Mary (or Marianne) Fonteneau Terrot, moved with her son to Berwick Upon Tweed, Northumberland. He was educated by the Rev. John Fawcett of Carlisle and the Carlisle Grammar School before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1808 (BA 1812). In 1813 he became a deacon and in 1814 he was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Chester. He succeeded his uncle, William Terrot, as minister of the Episcopalian church at Haddington. On 12 July 1815 he married Sarah Ingram Wood at Berwick (ODNB dates the marriage to 1818); they had fourteen children including a daughter who nursed in the Crimea and was awarded the Royal Red Cross. In 1816 his Hezekiah and Sennacherib won Cambridge University’s Seatonian prize. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1817 and he assumed joint charge with James Walker of St. Peter’s. Thereafter his ascent through the church hierarchy was steady until, in 1857, he was elected primus of the Scottish Episcopalian church. Sarah Terrot died in 1855 and in 1859 he married a widow, Charlotte Madden. She died in 1862, the same year that he suffered a paralytic stroke and resigned his role as primus. He died in Edinburgh 2 Apr. 1872 and was buried in the Calton cemetery. Terrot was also an accomplished mathematician (he published on number theory and other topics), and a member of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Architectural Society of Scotland. He published extensively, mainly sermons, but also Principles of Biblical Interpretation (1832-33, two volumes), a translation of Johann Ernesti’s Institutio Interpretis. (ODNB 12 Dec. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 12 Dec. 2021; Oxford University and City Herald 31 Dec. 1814; N&Q 26 Mar. 1887)
Other Names:
- C. H. Terrot
- Charles H. Terrot