Author: Vetch, George Anderson
Biography:
VETCH, George Anderson (1786-1873: ancestry.co.uk)
The son of Robert Vetch and his wife Agnes Shairp, he was born on the family estate of Caponflat, Haddington, on 30 Nov. 1786. He served for three years in the Haddington militia before joining the Bengal Infantry for the East India Company in 1805; he arrived in India on 19 Sept. 1806. He was wounded at the siege of Kumaon and was present with his regiment at other battles in the Anglo-Nepalese war. On 25 Jan. 1820 in Edinburgh he married Helen Hoggan. In India he moved steadily through the ranks, and was made an honourary Lieutenant Colonel for his services on 18 Nov. 1854 . He had retired in Feb. 1835 and returned to Scotland where, in 1838, he married Jane Anderson, daughter of an Edinburgh solicitor and nearly thirty years younger than Vetch. They lived in Haddington and had at least ten, possibly twelve, children. In 1852 Vetch published The Gong; or, Reminiscences of India which became known as “Gregory’s Gong” after the name of the fictive protagonist. He died on 10 Oct. 1873 and was buried in the churchyard at Haddington. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Dec. 2020; The Annual Register for the Year 1873 [1874]; V. C. P. Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834 [1927]; Máìre ní Fhlathúin, Poetry of British India [2011]) SR