John Williams Colenso married Mary Anne
Blackmore at Stoke Damerel in 1811. She was the
daughter of Thomas Richard Blackmore and Ann Pomery. Not
sure of her father’s occupation, but her brother Walter Pomeroy Blackmore was a
solicitor in Devonport and her sister Anne Sarah married Samuel Rowse, a solicitor in
John Williams Colenso was an agent for the
Duchy of Cornwall, and went bankrupt when his mine, the Happy Union, was
flooded around 1830. He also went on to be elected Mayor of Lostwithiel
in 1850.
He had a keen interest in geology and his paper
for the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, read in
October 1829, has been described as the first description of “global warming”.
I found the fossils that he excavated in the
John Williams Colenso and Mary Anne Blackmore
had the following children.
John William born
Emily Frances, born
Elizabeth Ann, born
Sophia Ann, born October 1821, dying
in 1854. She married Nicholas Kendall, chaplain of Bodmin
Prison, in 1845. They had one child - Mary. She married Spencer Percival Butler
and had many interesting children. Have a look at the Kendall Butler Connections.
Thomas Blackmore, born
Many biographical accounts of the life of John
William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, attribute his questioning of the theology of
the Church of England to his wife’s association with F D Maurice and his
mother’s Wesleyan faith, but this Colenso family was also associated with the
Wesleyan movement. John Williams Colenso’s brother William was a lay Wesleyan
preacher. Both brothers married into the
Flamark family of St Austell, with JWC’s wife dying
after a few months in 1808. Irregardless of the reasons, the children were first
christened in Princes Street Independent Chapel in Devonport. In 1827 they were
all christened again into the established church in St Austell.
Mary Ann Blackmore died in 1829, aged 40, when
John William was 15. George Cox’s biography states that John William was responsible
for the education of his brother and two sisters and was weighted with support
for his father. John Williams’ reverses were due to the flooding of the Happy
Union mine at Pentewan. This occurred around 1831,
resulting in John William becoming an assistant at a school in
John Williams was described as a Coal &
Timber merchant in Devonport in the 1830 Directory. He continued to act for the
Duchy of Cornwall and was elected Mayor of Lostwithiel
in 1850, aged 71. His son writes of his father’s health seriously failing in
1850, but he lives another 10 years, dying in Stonehouse
Devon on
He left an estate less than 2,000 pounds (later
resworn as less than 200 pounds). The residue of his
estate went to Emily, after leaving his gold watch to John William, a coffee
pot engraved JWMC to his granddaughter Mary Kendall and 10 pounds to his
faithful servant Agnes Truscott.