Beaver Henry Blacker


Beaver Henry Blacker was an Irish Anglican priest and historian. Blacker was resident for many years in England where he was the first editor of Gloucestershire Notes and Queries. He also contributed more than 60 articles to the Dictionary of National Biography.

Early life

Beaver Henry Blacker was born in Dublin on 31 May 1821, the eldest son of Latham Blacker, and a grandson of the historian and priest George Miller, author of the 1832 work History, philosophically illustrated. Blacker was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was the three-time recipient of the vice-chancellor's prize for English prose, and from where he received his B.A. degree in 1843, and his M.A. in 1846.

Family

Blacker married Isabella Rutherford in Ireland in 1850. In 1855 he married Sophia Eliza O'Reilly in Monkstown, Dublin. There were children from both marriages.

Career

Blacker was curate-in-charge of Donnybrook, in County of Dublin, from 1845 to 1856. In 1857 he was appointed to the vicarage of Booterstown, in Dublin; where he oversaw several improvements to St. Philip and St. James Church in Booterstown, and to the rural deanery of South Dublin in 1862. He resigned both positions in 1874 upon his retirement to England.
Between 1847 and 1854 he published several theological pamphlets, but his first topographical work was his Brief sketches of Booterstown and Donnybrook, in the County of Dublin, with notes and annals, issued in four parts between 1860 and 1874. A separate 186 page Annals of the parishes was appended to the descriptions of the four churches of Booterstown and Donnybrook.
In England, Blacker was curate-in-charge of Charlton Kings, in Gloucestershire, in 1875-76, and senior curate of Cheltenham, in 1876-78. He lived for three years in Stroud and moved to Clifton in 1881.

Selected publications