John Daniel Birkett

John Daniel Birkett was baptised on 1 March 1798 at the Church of St Andrew, Holburn, London. His record of baptism (original viewed online through Ancestry) states that he was born on 18 January 1798. "John Daniel, son of Daniel and Sarah Birkett Hatton Garden..."

The Harrow School Register reports that John Daniel Birkett entered the school in 1811, son of D. Birkett Esq. He was Monitor in 1815 and Head of the School in 1816. He went on to Trinity College Oxford and was Student of Lincoln's Inn in 1818.

Oxford University Alumni list (viewed online) states that John Daniel Birkett, son of Daniel of St. Andrew's, London, gent., matriculated from Trinity College, 18 February 1816, aged 18. Of Lincoln's Inn 28 Sep 1818.

His marriage, at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris on 22 March 1832, was just a few months after the death of his younger sister Maria in Paris. The record of their marriage [viewed online through Ancestry] states: " John Daniel Birkett of the Parish of St. Andrew, Holburn, in the City of London, bachelor, and Henriette Adelaide Morin, of the Parish of St Marylebone in the County of Middlesex, spinster, were married in this house by licence..."

A French family tree on Geneanet presents something of a mystery, a boy called Alfred Charles Felix BIRKETT, who died on 26 August 1837 at St Germain-en-Laye aged seven years and eight months (which would give an approximate birth date of December 1829. The tree proposes that he was the son of John Daniel BIRKETT and his 'wife' Amelie LELERC (she having been cited as the boy's mother at the time he died). It is perhaps more likely that the boy was the son of John Daniel's brother-in-law, Charles Jean Marie Felix, Marquis de la Valette, and was adopted by John Daniel after his sister died aged 24 in 1831, although that doesn't explain the surname BIRKETT. More research needed.

This same tree names a first son, John Albert BIRKETT, born 17 October 1838 at St Germain-en-Laye [Quoting Registre d'état civil de la commune de St-Germain-en-Laye, A.D. des Yvelines, online]. No further information found online regarding this boy.

The 1851 census shows the couple living at North Gate in the Parish of St. Thomas, Winchester, with a nine year old son, William D. Birkett. John Daniel is 52 and described as a gentleman with no profession (in brackets, 'landed proprietor') born in Middlesex, London. Adelaide is 47 and William D (9) is a scholar at home who was born in Saint Germaine en ??, France.

Gentleman's Magazine (Vol.37, 1852), in recording his death on 14 February at Greenwich, aged 53, noted that he was 'late of St Germain-en-Laye'. The Civil Registration Death Index [viewed online through Ancestry] records his death in the first quarter of 1852, therefore he was 54, not 53.

England Select Deaths & Burials [information online at Ancestry but original not viewable] states he was buried on 20 February 1852 at Isleworth, Middlesex.