Author: Wallis, Richard
Biography:
WALLIS, Richard (1753-1827: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 18 June 1753 at Simonburn, Northumberland, the eldest child of the Rev. Richard Wallis and his wife Elizabeth Rotheram, who had married the previous year at Haydon Bridge. He was educated at Queen’s College Oxford (matric. 1772, BA 1776) and then entered the church. He was appointed vicar of St. Mary the Virgin, Seaham, and perpetual curate of St. Hilda, South Shields, in 1783, and of Blanchland in 1804--all in county Durham. Blanchland is “The Happy Village” of his poem. Thomas Bewick supplied an engraving of the village. He married Jane Robinson (1761-1820), daughter of the Rev. John and Alice Robinson, on 27 Feb. 1783 at Seaham. They had a son, John Robinson, who also entered the church, and three daughters, Alicia Jane, Eliza, and Margaret. He died on 5 May 1827 and was buried “under a spreading sycamore on the south side of Seaham churchyard, near the brink of the romantic dean.” He also wrote The Group, a poem, of unknown length and date, but no copy has been located. It contained a plate with “portraits of the two brothers, Rotheram, of the author, his wife, and child, his sister Agnes … and of some other relatives” (Richardson, 344). (ancestry.co.uk 1 Feb. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 1 Feb. 2022; GM Feb. 1820, 188, Sept. 1826, 282, May 1827, 474; M. A. Richardson, The Local Historian’s Table Book [Newcastle 1843], 344; Memorial Inscription St. Mary the Virgin, Seaham) AA