Author: Weldon, William
Biography:
WELDON, William (1775/6?-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
His date of birth or baptism cannot be established with any certainty. His age at death was given as 79 and the 1841 census (subject to rounding) recorded that he was 70, thus giving birth dates of c.1766 and c.1771. His earlier military discharge papers gave his age as 27 in 1802 and 43 in 1818, giving a birth year of 1775/6. Details of his early life and education are therefore not known. He listed his publications—mainly short tracts--in The Two Covenants (1836), among them a Life of the Author in Three Parts (nd) but no copy of it has ever been located. What is known is that he enlisted as a private in the Pembroke Fencible Cavalry (1795-1800) and then in the Durham Fencible Infantry (1800-02). He became the trumpeter of the 13th Light Dragoons on 4 June 1802 and was promoted to sergeant in 1810. He served as trumpeter in the Peninsular War (1810-14) and was present at many battles. He was also present at Waterloo and remained with the army of occupation. He was discharged on a pension in 1818 due to injury. He then began his ministry and attended chapels in Brewer Street, London; the Bethel Chapel, Welwyn, Hertfordshire; Providence Chapel, Marlborough, Wiltshire; Grove and Wallingford, Berkshire; and the Bethel Chapel, Lewes, Sussex. He eventually became a Baptist minister at Thorpe Chapel, Birmingham, before moving to Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where he died 18 May 1845. He married Margaret Urquhart (1778-1836) on 20 Jan. 1799 in her parish of Haddington, Edinburgh. A scribal error recorded his surname as Welding but the marriage register records him as a musician in the Pembroke Fencible Cavalry. They had three children, with a daughter and a son reaching adulthood. His wife, Margaret, died in Birmingham in Sept. 1836. It seems likely he was on the eccentric wing of the Baptists, with several of his works printed by Ebenezer Huntington (1779-1821), the son of “Sinner Saved” William Huntington (q.v.). (ancestry.co.uk 15 Aug. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 15 Aug. 2023; Janet and David Bromley, Wellington’s Men Remembered: A Register [2015], 2: 1962-3; Norfolk Chronicle 24 May 1845; GRO death cert.) AA
Other Names:
- W. Weldon