Author: WAGSTAFFE, John
Biography:
WAGSTAFFE, John (1727-1808: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born at Overton, Hampshire, the son of Thomas Wagstaffe, draper, but there is no record of his baptism and his mother’s name is not known. At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a baker in London, after which he settled in Norwich, Norfolk, where he continued to work as a baker and flour merchant. In the 1780s he lived in Coslany Street, Norwich, later moving to Bawburgh, a village five miles west of Norwich. He had early developed an interest in agricultural science and natural history and was a frequent correspondent of Bath Agricultural Society, of which he became an honorary member. He had also acquired an early interest in poetry and had written An Elegy, Written in a Quaker’s Burial Ground. To which is added The Country Quaker (1764)—of which a rare copy is held by the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds--before publishing anonymously Stone Henge (1792), addressed to his friend and neighbour Edward Jerningham (q.v.). (It is still not attributed to him in library catalogues although it was known to be his and was mentioned in obituaries.) He married fellow Quaker Sarah Fenn, daughter of Edward Fenn, collar maker, on 4 Oct. 1750 at Norwich meeting-house. They had six children. He died on 18 Oct. 1808 at Bawburgh and was buried in the Quaker burial ground, Norwich. His wife, Sarah, had died earlier, in 1803. (ancestry.co.uk 19 Nov. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 19 Nov. 2023; Bury and Norwich Post 26 Oct. 1808; Athenaeum 4 [1808] 549, and 5 [1809], 275; The Norwich and Norfolk Remembrancer and Vade-Mecum [2nd ed. 1822], 109; Friends’ Books 2: 844-5) AA