Calamaish Books

Resources: Pawns in a Larger Game


 

 William Thackwray Senior


Born
 1780
Died
 28 Oct 1829
Son of
 Unknown
Siblings
 Unknown
Married
 Dorothy Pownell
1800 (est)
Children
 John
Dorothy
Ann
William Jr
Helen (d. as infant)
Joseph Ebenezer
James
William died before the invention of photography. No portrait exists. This word picture by his apprentice Thomas Stubbs is quoted in Chapter 4 of Pawns in a Larger Game:
Old Thackwray was a strange sort of man, he was very stout, and from his talk would be taken for a Quaker, as he always said, ‘yea’ and ‘nay’ and ‘thou’. But what was the strangest thing about him, he scarcely ever spoke without fart­ing, for instance – he would say, “George [George Wood, another apprentice] thou art a fool (Poop). George if thou doesn't alter (Poop) I shall be obliged to (Poop) get rid of thee (Poop).” Sometimes he would talk to his daughter Dolly [Dorothy] and he would say, “Dolly ist thou going (Poop) up the Town? Because if thou art thou must not (Poop) stay long (Poop).”

Stubbs’s description of a stout, farting, old man with a strange accent is satirical. Another contemporary description reads:
He was an amiable and intelligent man; and few, very few, possessed, like him the qualifications requisite for the casual life he had adopted – with a vigorous mind, and a constitution proof against the climate; he had latterly been familiar to misfortune; and it was to repair his shattered circumstances that he thus became the object of chance – to forgo the comforts of home, for a novel and adventurous uncertainty …

Biographical Notes

Arrived in the Cape in 1820 aboard Northampton in Bailie's Party.
His life is treated in detail in Chapters 4, 5, and 7 - 10.
Thackwray document
 One of several documents recording births of William Thackwray’s and Dorothy Pownall’s children. It appears to be a copy of a document prepared by William, probably made by a family member. The paper has a watermark “Buckland Mill 1873” a date forty four years after William's death. It was found, together with other drafts and a fine copy in another hand, in Joseph Walker Jr’s family bible. Joseph had an interest in recording his own family details but it is not in his handwriting. It might have been made by his wife Dorothy Driver or her father Edward, who was still alive at the time. All of William and Dorothy Thackwray’s children were already dead.