Richard Lovell Edgeworth, I

• Profile picture - Engraving by A Cardon 1812. BBC Hulton Picture Library.

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Wikipedia Biographical Summary

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (31 May 1744 – 13 June 1817) was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor.

Biography

Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street, Bath, England, great-grandson of Sir Salathiel Lovell through his grand-daughter, Jane Lovell.

A Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford alumnus, he is credited for creating, among other inventions, a machine to measure the size of a plot of land. He also made strides in the developing educational methods. He anticipated the caterpillar track with an invention that he played around with for forty years but that he never successfully developed. He described it as a "cart that carries its own road".

He lived in Ireland at his estate at Edgeworthstown, County Longford where he reclaimed bogs and improved roads. He sat in Grattan's Parliament for St Johnstown (County Longford) from 1798 until the Act of Union in 1801 and advocated Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary reform. He was a founder-member of the Royal Irish Academy. He died in Edgworthstown on 13 June 1817.

Family

He was the father of Maria Edgeworth, Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, and 20 other children (by his four wives), and grandfather to Francis Ysidro Edgeworth.

• By his first wife Anna Maria Elers Edgeworth had four children: Richard (1765–1796), died in America; Maria the novelist; Emmeline, married to J. King of Clifton; and Anna Maria, married to Dr. Thomas Beddoes.
• By his second wife Honora Sneyd he had Lovell, who inherited the property, and Honora, a beauty, who died in 1790.
• By his third wife Elizabeth Sneyd, he had five sons and four daughters, of whom Charles Sneyd (d. 1864) succeeded his brother Lovell, and Honora married Sir Francis Beaufort; William Edgeworth was known as an engineer.
• By his fourth wife Frances Ann Beaufort, daughter of Daniel Augustus Beaufort, he had four children, of whom his son Francis Beaufort was mentioned in Thomas Carlyle's Life of Sterling and married a Spanish lady, Rosa Florentina Eroles, and was by her father of Antonio Eroles Edgeworth, who succeeded his uncle Charles Sneyd at Edgeworthstown, and of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. A daughter Lucy Jane married the Irish astronomer Thomas Romney Robinson.

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'Richard Lovell Edgeworth', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 August 2013, 10:05 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Lovell_Edgeworth&...> [accessed 24 August 2013]

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• Burke, Bernard, Sir. A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland 6th ed. London : Harrison 1879. Vol I. page 501

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Richard Lovell Edgeworth had 22 children with four wives. His first wife, Anna Maria Elers, is our direct ancestor