My Great-Great Grandfather’s Cousins

Ann was my great-great grandfather, James Mackenzie Roberts’s aunt. So the (typically named) children of Ann and Henry Horswill were his first cousins, although it is doubtful he had much, if any, communication with them: Mary (1823–89); Henry (1824–29); Ann (1828–81); Elizabeth Roberts (1830–1903, the only member of the extended family to have Roberts as a middle name); Ellen (1833–1903); Henry Grant (1836–63); and Emma (1838–1912).

Henry Grant Horswill the younger

The only son to survive infancy, Henry Grant Horswill the younger, deserves special mention. He was an apprentice carpenter in 1851, aged fifteen, probably apprenticed to his father.

However, he must have joined the Royal Artillery soon afterwards, as according to the probate index and the medal roll, he was a driver in No. 3 battery, 13th brigade. He served in China during the Second Anglo-China War (Second Opium War) in the 1850s and was present at the capture of Taku Forts and Peking (Beijing) in 1860. (See also the video here.) The brigade were garrisoned in the north of China at Tientsin (Tianjin). 

Henry was awarded the Second China War medal, which would have been similar to those awarded to his fellow drivers Thomas Plevin and James Davidson, of the same battery and brigade. However he may not have actually received it as he died on 2 May 1863, most likely in China. He was just twenty-eight. An inscription to him was added to the family gravestone in Ugborough churchyard when his parents died in 1865. The memorial doesn’t say precisely where he died, nor how, but it does indicate that he died at sea. 

After the actions at Peking and Taku Forts, No. 3 battery, 13th brigade were moved south to Shanghai, more than a day’s sail away, where they were during the stifling summer of 1862. A report was published on the mortality of troops in China, highlighting the conditions in which the battery was quartered in the city:

This section of the Shanghai garrison consists of the whole of No. 3 Battery of the 13th Brigade ... The greater portion of the men are located in a large two-storied house and a smaller one adjoining it in the centre of the English settlement. The accommodation is good, and there is no overcrowding (page 8).

But sickness and disease were widespread and not confined to dry land. In fact more were dying on board ship: ‘cholera and choleraic diarrhoea are prevailing extensively on board Her Majesty’s ship Euryalus, now lying off the settlement [i.e. Shanghai], and inflicting a heavy loss on her crew’ (page 19). The report also mentions that two invalids died on board HMS Vulcan, at the port of Chefoo, in the north of China near Taku Forts (page 10). If Henry died at sea in May 1863, either from injury or illness, it must have been on board a similar troopship or maybe a hospital ship? ‘At sea’ suggests it was not in port though.

I don’t think he died during passage back to England, as by the time the 157 survivors of No. 3 battery, 13th brigade set sail from Shanghai on the freight ship Silver Eagle, at the end of June 1863, Henry had already been dead for several weeks. (They arrived at Woolwich pier at the end of October 1863. Thacker’s Overland News reported that ‘15 of the invalids who died during the passage were buried at sea’. They were all of other regiments though.)

But maybe the Silver Eagle also bore this tragic news home to the Horswill family in Devon? If Lazarus was informed by his sister of her sad loss, he couldn’t know in 1863 that his nephew’s death foreshadowed the fate of his youngest son, Henry’s cousin Edward Parrey Roberts (my great-great grandfather’s brother), who was also in China and would drown in the wreck of HMS Racehorse the following year, at Chefoo. Another cousin, Charles Dunrich Roberts, probably also died at sea during this decade. The 1860s were indeed years of grief for Lazarus and Ann.