Author: Vassar, John James
Biography:
VASSAR, John James (1759-1820: ancestry.co.uk)
He may have been the James John Vassar (sic) baptised on 11 Feb. 1759 at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, the son of James Vassar and his wife Ann Johnson, who had married in London in 1749. Nothing is known of his education but by 1787 he was at Winchendon, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with his younger brother Benjamin. They both contracted debts upon bonds and eventually joined the army. He married Mary Bateman on 28 Jan. 1789 at St. Paul’s Covent Garden, London. They had at least one child. He is recorded as serving as cornet and lieutenant in Lord Hawkesbury’s Cinque Ports Regiment of Light Dragoons. By 1799 he was first in Uxbridge and then in Parliament Street, Westminster, London, still running up debts and having his first brush with the King’s Bench. Soon after his Poems on Several Occasions (1799), in Feb. 1801 he applied to the RLF for assistance. He was awarded five guineas but was later put on the 11 Aug. 1806 list of 74 questionable claims and no further applications were made. On 14 Nov. 1804 he was imprisoned at Newgate for debt and continued to be in financial trouble until at least 1807. In 1810 he caused a minor stir with a pamphlet criticising military expenditure, but was largely ignored. He died at Hans Place, Knightsbridge, and was buried on 22 Mar. 1820 at St. Luke’s, Chelsea. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Oct. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 29 Oct. 2022; RLF, 1/96; Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, D-LE/15) AA
Other Names:
- J. J. Vassar
- James John Vassar