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This page is part of a website based
on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. Please email site controller Eric
Alexander with any comments or queries. |
HENRY
CORT'S BIRTH
According
to the inscription on his tombstone, Cort "departed this Life 23rd May
1800 in the 60th Year of his age."
Commentators
have deduced he was born in 1740. But
it could have been as late as 22 May 1741 (before you allow for the 11 days
that failed to materialise when the calendar changed
in 1752).
Consider
also the record of his first marriage (Crowhurst,
Surrey), 24 April 1764.
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Henry Cort of this ph
gentleman & Miss Elizabeth Brown of the ph of St.Giles in the
Fields, in the County of Midx were married in this Church by
Licence this (24th) day of April 1764 by me W m
Hoggart, Minister. From Crowhurst parish
register. |
He is
said to be 22, consistent with a birth date after 14 April 1741.
And the
place of his birth?
This is stated
explicitly, "Ellell, near Lancaster", in one of the main sources of information about him.
Of contemporary documents, the only significant one is
the 1789 will of Jane Cort of Lancaster.
It names
"my Cousin Henry Cort late of the Navy Office Crutched ffryers London but
now of Gosport in Hampshire Gentleman" as an
executor and beneficiary.
It also
refers to Cort's "sister Jane Cort of Standing in Herefordshire
Spinster".
Either the quoted location
is a mistake, or it is a remarkable coincidence that Cort purchased a small estate at Standon in Hertfordshire.
Mott constructed a family tree for Jane Cort.
Her
father was another Henry Cort, formerly Mayor of Kendal.
All her
siblings (other than those who died in infancy) were baptised or buried in
Lancaster, showing that the whole family moved there from Kendal. Infant deaths included both of Jane’s
brothers named Henry – an instance of fate being unkind to sons given the same
name as their father (also noticeable in Attwick and
Haysham families). Two of Jane’s
nephews were also named Henry, but Mott identified them from family wills as a
merchant and a mariner. No sign of our
inventor.
No sign,
either, of a family branch from which a cousin Henry may have sprung. Mott concluded that the term
"cousin" in Jane’s time covered a wide variety of relations. He reckoned Cort the inventor was
illegitimate, and speculated who the father might be.
He did
not consider the possibly that Cort was a bastard from
another family, and had been adopted by the Corts.
If so,
the other family may have been rich and interested enough to help in his
career. A good job in London at
sixteen, a partnership at twenty-one.
A story
that his father was a builder seems to originate in a nineteenth-century
account by Samuel Smiles, who probably heard it from one of Cort's
children.
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Related pages |
henrycort.net
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