Cyrus Davie (1786 - 1846)

Born 21 Feb 1786 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England

Ancestors

Husband of Jane (Eveleigh) Davie — married 4 Feb 1819 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, United Kingdom

Descendants

Died Jul 1846 at age 60 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Cyrus was born in 1786. He was baptised on Feb 21st, 1786 at Lyme Regis.

Cyrus Davie worked as a Customs officer. In 1840 he was Collector and Comptroller of Customs at Lyme. At the 1841 census Cyrus was the comptroller of customs at Rye, Sussex, although his family were still in Lyme Regis. In 1843 he was still at Rye but in 1845 he was Comptroller and Landing Surveyor at King's Lynn, Norfolk. In 1846 he was listed as Comptroller of Customs for Gloucester.^[1]

The 1840's was a time of great change in HM Customs in the United Kingdom, driven by the liberalisation of trade that took place under Sir Robert Peel and others. A series of Acts of Parliament (in 1842, 1845 and 1846) led to the abolition of 1,200 tariffs (including all export duty) and those that remained were reduced to a maximum of 10%. ^[2] As a Customs Officer at a series of small ports around England this will have made a big impact on Cyrus' working life; it may have been a reason for his moving away from Lyme Regis to other places, without his family. Another, probably linked reason, was that he went bankrupt in 1839.

Cyrus was baptised into a non-conformist religious background (Coombe Street Independent Chapel in Lyme Regis). His wife, Jane, was also from a non-conformist background but they were married in a Church of England church. Cyrus was buried in a Church of England church in Gloucester and it is interesting that three days later three of his children (William, Prudence and Mary) were baptised in the same Church of England church in Gloucester. ^[3] In 1850 his eldest son, also called Cyrus, emigrated to New Zealand to the Church of England dominated settlement of Christchurch Canterbury. Most of the settlers on the "First Four Ships" (including Cyrus junior) had to prove a strong link to the Church of England in order to gain passage through the Canterbury Association.

He died in 1846 at Gloucester. ^[4]

Sources

1. ↑ The British Imperial Calendars of 1840, 1843 and 1846; plus an 1845 history of Norfolk; scanned in Google books
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Customs#Nineteenth_century
3. ↑ Ancestry.com baptism records
4. ↑ Ancestry.com