Author: Tovey, Thomas
Biography:
TOVEY, Thomas (1753-1829: ancestry.co.uk)
His date of baptism has not yet been established (there are several candidates) but two sources give his age at death (76 burial, 77th year newspaper). Nothing is known of his education or his early years but by 1803 he was living in Bath and was probably a member of the Bath and West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. He married Susanna Atkins on 22 Nov. 1803 at Walcot St. Swithin, Bath. They went on to have at least three sons and three daughters, and moved to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Several children were baptised at the Ebenezer Chapel (Wesleyan), Cheltenham. He worked as a Sunday School teacher and had ambitions to become master of a church school but failed. He attempted to raise funds for a Charity School for poor children and hoped that the proceeds from Cheltea (1818), dedicated to Edward Jenner, with just over one hundred subscribers, would enable him to do so. It is not known if he obtained a position at a school or opened one himself but his newspaper death notice stated that he had been “for many years a schoolmaster of Cheltenham” and after his death his wife and daughters are recorded running a school at Portland Square, Cheltenham. He died on 2 Mar. 1829 at Cheltenham and was buried at St. Mary’s. His wife, Susannah, survived him and died in 1861. A final prose work, An Earnest Address to All Ranks of People (1828), revisited the problems of land monopoly and the decline of small holdings, and the cost of living and provision for the poor, which he had first raised in Things As They Were (1803). It also announced on its title-page the forthcoming publication a descriptive poem, The Shepherd Boy, but that work does not appear to have been printed or published. (ancestry.co.uk 28 May 2024; Monmouthshire Merlin 5 Mar. 1829; Cheltenham Mercury 9 Mar. 1861) AA