Charles Dallenger Chenery

Charles Dallenger Chenery was born the 4th child of Charles Chenery Dallinger (1789 - 4/1831) and Sarah Watling (bap 31/10/1784 - 3/1878 in Hoxne Union), who were married on 30/9/1814 in Stradbroke, Suffolk, England. He was baptized on 28/2/1819 in Stradbroke. He had four sisters: Dinah (born 1815), Eliza Caroline (born 1816), Marie (bap 30/10/1817 - 3/1863 bur Wilby Churchyard), and Lettice (1821 - 1892 in Australia). He also had two half-brothers, Charles Chinnery Dallenger Roper (born 11 December 1810) and James Roper (born 17 July 1819 and died in 1841), who were the sons of Sarah Roper (±1790-1853), the daughter of one of his father's tenants. Some time before 1850, he changed his name to Charles Dallenger Chenery. He was educated at Kelsale Grammar School, near Saxmundham, Suffolk, about 15 km southeast of Wilby. The school no longer exists. It was founded in 1714 out of trusts for a schoolmaster to teach the boys of the parish. In 1765 it was set up as a school in which "ten of the poorest children should be educated in writing, casting accounts, or grammar learning, or to maintain such of the grammar scholars at Cambridge as the trustees should think fit". In 1829 there were 87 children in the school, though by 1867 it had decreased to 71.

In 1841, when Chenery was 22, he became an Assistant Master in the Classics Department of Cheltenham College, Gloucester . He was thus one of the first twelve Masters of the College when it opened in that year under the headmastership of The Revd Alfred Phillips, D.D.

On 17 October 1849, when he was 30 years of age, Chenery went up to Trinity College Dublin. He is described in the Alumni Dublinenses as a pensioner. He seems to have attended Trinity College at an interesting time in its history. There is no evidence that he took a leave from Cheltenham College between 1849 and 1853, but he undoubtedly continued to teach, for terms could be kept at Trinity by examination, rather than by attendance. After 1820 the number of students not resident in Dublin began to increase, in good measure because of an influx of mature students: by 1850 17% of the undergraduates who matriculated were 21 or over. "These undergraduates of mature age were mostly men who were already earning their living; most of them were domiciled in Great Britain (especially the north-western counties of England), and they gladly seized on an opportunity, to which at this time there was no alternative, of reading for a degree in their spare time without having to abandon their employment." (D.A. Webb and R.B. McDowell, Trinity College Dublin: An Academic History [Dublin 1981], 116) In the spring of 1853, Charles received the degree of BA.

On 28 July 1853, Charles Dallenger Chenery was married to Isabella Baldry of Wilby Hall, Wilby, Suffolk (3 October 1825 - 2 November 1914). The marriage took place in Wilby Church. Isabella was the daughter of William Baldry (1780-1838) and Margaret Buxton (1792-1827), and a 16 x great-grandaughter of King Edward I of England. There is no written evidence of where the couple met, but according to family history it was in Cheltenham, where Isabella was attending finishing school. The Chenerys lived in Cheltenham, but gave as their home address Russell Lodge, Wilby, Suffolk.

Isabella Baldry

The Chenerys purchased a house in Cheltenham named Northwick Villa, on the southwest corner of Bath and Thirlestaine Roads, diagonally across from the main College building. This house was one of the places used as a boarding house by Cheltenham College. Until the 1850s there were no purpose-built boarding houses at Cheltenham. "From the first College was a boarding school as well as a day school but at the beginning the boarding arrangements were separate from the teaching and the men and women in charge of boarding houses were responsible not to the Principal but to the directors." (M.C. Morgan, Cheltenham College: The First Hundred Years [Chalfont St. Giles: Richard Sadler, for the Cheltonian Society, 1968], 10) The picture above is taken from Tim Pearce, Then and Now: An Anniversary Celebration of Cheltenham College 1841-1991 (The Cheltonian Society, 1991), 36 and 188.

The Chenerys had six children: (family tree on this link)

Edith. She was born on 15 April 1854. She married John Hunter on 14 April 1887, and died in childbirth on 16 March 1889.  Some surviving pieces of sheet music suggest some training in voice. She inscribed a copy of Edward Young's Night Thoughts to her brother Oscar on his ninth birthday. Pencilled in her handwriting on the reverse side of the next to last folio of the volume is a dance card, which reads: "1st Waltz. W./ 2nd Schottische. J./ 2nd Waltz. C./ 1st Polka. A./ 2nd Polka. S."

Claudine Kathleen, born in Cheltenham 20 January 1856, married Edward Charles Freuer 16 December 1880, and died in Klamath Falls, Oregon, 19 March 1931.

Vernon St. Clair, born 6 July 1859. After attending Cheltenham and Framlingham Colleges (he was a day boy at Cheltenham, and left in June 1868, entering Framlingham in 1871), Vernon was killed in his 14th  year in a hunting accident on 28 February 1873, in Wilby, Suffolk. His grave marker is in Wilby churchyard. The stone bears the image of a broken lily. On this link is a view of Framlingham College.

Oscar St. Clair . He was born in Cheltenham on 5 March 1861. He was educated at Framlingham College from 1871, and then took employment with a Sunderland engineering works. In 1882, he emigrated to North Dakota, establishing himself in business in Jamestown. On 24 November 1886, he married Jennie Martha Kelley (1866-1949) of Jamestown. He died at home on 13 May 1922.

Cecil, born 18 July 1863, married Ellen Caroline Rudkin, and died 25 March 1895.

Ida, born 15 March 1865, and died some time after 1935. After her father's death in 1876, she continued to reside in Russell House, Wilby (see next page) until her mother's death in 1914, and the selling up of the property. It is believed that she moved to Colchester. In a letter of late 1903, her brother Oscar described her as having a beautiful singing voice.

In the spring of 1856, Chenery received his MA, a degree which followed the passage of three years after the BA with the payment of a fee. In February 1860, he was granted Arms, as follows: "Per Cheveron Sable and Or in chief two Torches of the Second fired proper and in base upon a mount Vert an Olive Tree also proper: And for the Crest On a wreath of The Colours A Lion rampant Or gorged with a Wreath of Olive proper supporting an Antique Shield Sable thereon an Owl Argent".The painting on the left is taken from a bookplate. The motto is Labore Non Sorte : "By hard work, not by luck."

In 1868, Charles retired from Cheltenham College, and the family moved to Wilby. They settled in Russell House, which a local builder constructed for them. When this move took place is not clear, but it did not occur immediately upon Chenery's retirement, for on 4 March 1870 Chenery inscribed a copy of the Bible in Greek to his son Vernon St. C. Chenery as from Cheltenham, though Vernon, who is listed as having been a day boy at Cheltenham left that school in June 1868. However, since school records show that Vernon and Oscar Chenery both entered Framlingham College in 1871, it is possible that the family settled in Wilby in the period 1870-71. The house was described by an Estate Agent in 1992 as Grade II listed Victorian. In addition, Charles owned several properties in Wilby, Wingfield, and Mendham Parishes. According to the Catalogue of Sale for 2 July 1917, the real property consisted of 9 lots: 1) Russell House; 2) The Russell Lodge Farm, adjoining Russell House, consisting of a 38-acre farm; 3) a double cottage in two tenements at Russell's Green, with just over 3 acres of allotment; 4) four cottages in 7 tenements at the corner of Cockerills Road and Russells Green Road, together with over 5 acres of allotments; 5) a double cottage in two tenements in Cockerills Road; 6) a 20-acre farm in the Parish of Wingfield, on the main road from Stradbroke to Fressingfield; 7) a cottage with garden in three tenements, and a double cottage with garden, and over 6 acres of arable land, in two tenements, in Wingfield on the road from Wingfield to Fressingfield; 8) "Hill Houses", a double cottage with allotments next to Lot 7 on the road from Wingfield to Fressingfield, containing over an acre of land; and 9) "Laurel" or "Red House" Farm in Mendham, about 1.6 km from Mendham Church, consisting of just over 38 acres of land. Russell House contained a library of at least 518 volumes, including works on American literature, art history, biography, Classical literature (Cicero, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Plutarch, and Seneca), English literature (including Bunyan, Byron, James Fennimore Cooper, Cowper, Crabbe, Dickens, Maria Edgeworth, Washington Irving, Milton, Pope, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Southey, and Lawrence Stern), French (Voltaire), gardening, heraldry, history (American, Egyptian, English, European, Greek, and Roman), law (Blackstone), natural history, ornithology, science, theology, and travel.

Chenery died on 9 August 1876. He is buried in Wilby churchyard between Vernon and Isabella. Isabella lived with Ida in Russell House until her death on 2 November 1914. She is buried beside Charles. In the church, on the wall of the south aisle. by the Lady Chapel Altar, there is a memorial brass to Isabella Chenery under a gilded plaster frieze of classical figures.

Additions have been made to this page from Adrian's notes.