Life and Letters of Dean Church - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... PART I EARLY LIFK--OXFORD FOREIGN TRAVEL Richard William Church was born, the eldest of three sons, at Lisbon, the 25th of April 1815. His father, John Dearman Church, was born at Cork in 1781, and was the son of Matthew Church--the head of a merchant-house in that city--and of Ann Dearman, of a Yorkshire family. Both Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Church came of Quaker parentage, and were professing members of the Society of Friends; and there grew up through marriage in the next generation various connections with Backhouses, Gurneys, and other well-known Quaker names. The link which bound the family to the Society did not, however, last longer unbroken, though it would not perhaps be impossible to discern certain distinctive traits of Quaker character, which in some of its members at least survived the outward change. Mr. John Dearman Church was formally "disunited" from the Connection, and was baptized a member of the English Church, at the time of his marriage in 1814. His younger brother Richard, afterwards General Sir Richard Church, broke away / B earlier, and at sixteen entered the army, where a commission was purchased for him in the 13th Light Infantry; the choice of such a profession in itself involving severance from a community, with which a character, keenly ambitious of military distinction, and marked by a strong natural love of adventure, had very little in common. In 1810, business affairs in Cork no longer prospering, Mr. J. D. Church went to Portugal and settled in Lisbon, where, since the opening of the war, and the French occupation of Lisbon, which had broken up many of the old mercantile houses, new opportunities for successful ventures in business now offered themselves. Four years later he married Miss Metzener, of an Anglo-German family ...