Merivale FamilySamuel Merivale 1715 - 1771
Anna Wilhelmina Merivale 1782 – 1815 - his granddaughter 3 (possibly 4) infants died 1778-83 - his grandchildren John Walter: March – June 1778 Jane: June 1776 – September 1778 Girl: 1774 – October 1780 (Girl: October 1783 – October 1785 not noted by Beryl Coe but maybe buried in the same cave) 
The following text has been provided by Rachel Knowles, a descendant of the Merivale family, who still lives in Exeter.
It is not 100% certain that the smaller obelisk (memorial 80) marks the Merivale cave, but Anna Wilhelmina’s name and the date 1815 was recorded (as Ann Merivale) as being visible on it in the 1980s and I remember seeing the name on it around the same time (I climbed over the wall to have a look!) I’m indebted to Beryl Coe for her research because we now know that there was a Merivale cave constructed and opened at times that match the dates of death of Samuel and his small grandchildren - I’d say it was likely that she was buried in the same cave as her grandfather and siblings and that the obelisk marks it but we may never know if that is correct. I have included our email correspondence about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obelisk 80 is constructed of Portland Limestone. Archaeologist Martin Dyer's description is: Obelisk. Pedestal consists of a plinth (61cm square), a square dado (53 x 53cm) inscribed on west face and a plain cornice (60 cm square). This is surmounted by an obelisk made in two parts: a base with concave sides and a long thin tapering upper section with a flattened pyramidal top. Upper section has oval recesses for inscription plaques on south and west faces. Plaque on west face is missing. Total height of monument is 175cm. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following account is largely drawn from ‘Family Memorials’ (1884) compiled by Anna Wilhelmina Merivale (the younger) and privately published. Samuel Merivale was born on the 21st November 1715 in Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, the son of a stocking weaver. In 1729 the renowned Nonconformist preacher and teacher Dr Philip Doddridge established a Presbyterian Congregation and Academy for the Training of Nonconformist Ministers in Northampton. Merivale, rebelling against his strict Calvinistic upbringing, joined the Congregation and was accepted, aged 16, into the Academy. By the age of 21 he was Minister to the Presbyterian Congregation in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. In 1736 he had formed an attachment to Miss Betsy Bottrell in Northampton, she reciprocated but her father did not approve the match and she married a Mr William Manning. According to a family biographer, “The disappointment of his hopes brought about a tedious attack of Ague and fever, after his recovery from which he was glad to accept a ‘call’ from a congregation in a very distant part of the country, the small town of Tavistock in Devonshire.” In 1743 he made the journey on horseback, which took a week, and after preaching in Tavistock for a few Sundays he was formally ordained after a nerve-wracking examination by a board of ‘sternly orthodox ministers’ in Exeter. In 1748, after a long courtship, he married Elizabeth Shellaber of Tavistock. They had three children but only one, John, survived to adulthood. Around 1760 a group of the more liberal Presbyterian ministers established a Dissenting Academy on liberal principles in Exeter. The Principal, Micaiah Towgood, approached Merivale on a number of occasions to teach there. Merivale was reluctant, but, following his wife’s death in 1762, he gave up his ministry in Tavistock and moved to Exeter, taking a house in The Mint. At some point after this he heard that his former sweetheart Betsy Bottrell, now Manning, was widowed with a son, James. Samuel began a correspondence with her and in 1766 they married. Merivale continued to teach at the academy in Exeter and preach at the Thorverton Meeting until his death in December 1771, presumably of sepsis, “from a carbuncle on his shoulder”. He was buried in the Dissenters’ Graveyard and there is an entry in the graveyard accounts which bears this out: 26 December 1771 Received from Mr Merivale (Samuel’s son John) for making his cave, 15 shillings. Shortly before her death Samuel’s first wife Elizabeth and her brother Walter had inherited a small fortune from a cousin. Samuel was somewhat embarrassed by the wealth, but it would have enabled his son John to afford the expensive option of having a family cave built in the graveyard. Samuel Merivale’s stepson, the Revd James Manning, took over preaching at Thorverton and afterwards became minister at George’s Meeting, a post he held for 53 years. His mother, the second Mrs Elizabeth Merivale, died in 1815 and was buried in her son’s vault, at his expense, rather than in her husband’s. Merivale was a prolific writer and much survives thanks to his grandson John Herman Merivale who transcribed it from shorthand. His sermons have been preserved and also many letters including his ardently persuasive courtship of Elizabeth Shellaber and the charming and poignant correspondence with his daughter Jane who died aged 14. Much of this archive is now at the Devon Heritage Centre. A version of his book of meditations, ‘Daily Devotions for the Closet’, appears to be available on Amazon! Grandchildren of Samuel Merivale In 1773 Samuel’s only surviving child, John, married Ann Katenkamp, also from a Dissenting family, whose father Herman had come to Exeter from Bremen to work in the Baring counting house and married an Exeter woman, Ann Moor. John and Ann Merivale had seven children but only three, Anna Wilhelmina, John Herman and Frances, survived childhood. The other four, three girls and a boy all died of croup between 1778 and 1785. Research shows that the Merivale cave was opened for burials in May 1778, September 1778 and October 1783, which matches the dates of death for John Walter aged three months (though mother’s account says June1778), Jane aged two and an unnamed girl aged six. Ann Merivale wrote a vivid memoir of her early life, which includes affecting descriptions of her childrens’ deaths and her desperate attempts to find a cure. She wrote for advice from a doctor in Edinburgh where the disease was more common and when Frances developed symptoms of croup in 1787 the treatment, which involved giving drops to increase perspiration and emetics to clear phlegm, worked. John Merivale’s retiring nature and inherited wealth meant he neither wanted nor needed to earn a living, and when his uncle Walter Shellaber died in 1780 he inherited the estate at Annery, which he sold and used the money to build a country house, Barton Place, which still stands near Cowley Bridge. Here he lived the life of a gentleman looking after his small estate and ensuring a good education and social connections for his son and daughters. Their elder daughter Anna Wilhelmina (1782 – 1815) was, according to her niece (also Anna Wilhelmina), ‘short in person, plain and very slightly deformed. Her liveliness and wit were the delight of her friends. She wrote with ease in prose and verse’. She died unmarried in November 1815 aged 34 from typhus fever supposedly caught after bathing at Dawlish rather late in the year. Her name and date of death was still legible and recorded on the smaller obelisk in the 1980s. Her brother, John Herman Merivale, married Louisa, daughter of Joseph Drury, headmaster of Harrow school. The two families were close friends and there survives a collection of letters from Anna Wilhelmina to Louisa written around 1805 when she was in her early 20s (transcriptions of two letters can be downloaded below). They give a sharply observed and funny account of parochial life in Exeter for young women of that social stratum, very similar to that described in the novels of Jane Austen. Letter dated January 1804 Letter dated 29 April 1804 Letter dated 11 July 1805 describing the wedding of John Herman M. and Louisa Drury Additional information Letter from Micaiah Towgood and other ministers to Samuel Merivale. Exon, Feb. 7 1761. Revd and Dear Sir, Being persuaded that you are thorowly impressed with a Sense of the great Importance of some Academical Institution in this City, for the Support of our Interests, and for the support of our Congregations as they successively become vacant in these Parts;...the Province of Reading the Divinity Lectures we can get no one to undertake...Our eyes therefore are now fixed upon you, Sir, who are so well acquainted with the system intended to be read, as the Person of all others the most proper for that Station. In the Character of a Tutor, and an occasional Preacher, residing in this City, you will, there is reason to believe, be far more useful to the Church, and more extensively beneficial to Society in general, than even in that of a Pastor to your present Congregation...S.Towgood. Mic Towgood. Abraham Tozer Letter from Pentecost Barker (of the Plymouth Congregation) to Samuel Merivale Feb, 25. 1761...I don’t like your going [to Exeter]. In the first place I can’t say I do not like the Place, for I scarce know a better – but for the People – Zealots, Bigots, Meddlers, Chatterers – often Bankrupts after bragging of being worth Thousands – Ergo, I protest against your going there with my Consent, Approbation, and Good Will – But if you think to do good hereby – with all my heart God bless you – and I shall then rejoice in it. The Exonians are a pragmatical censorious set of People, and void of Charity. You write, I would not be an Exeter minister. But let them get you there, and preach you must, or your house will be besieged. Say I said so. After all, I leave it to God and you. Who knows but you are the Moses to stand in the gap? The deaths of John and Ann Merivale’s children In the month of June (1778) my little Boy was taken ill in a disorder which ended in the Croup, and for the first time I felt what it is to lose a child. It is true this was only three months old, but I suckled it, and with a Mother’s fondness watched its daily improvements...In the month of September following we were invited to join a party of friends in a little excursion which was to last two or three days. I felt a reluctance to leave home for which I could not account...left my two little girls quite well, to the care of servants whom we thought quite worthy of the trust...My little Jane was just two years and a quarter old, and one of the sweetest children both in person and in disposition that I have ever beheld...she was just able to speak, and her engaging efforts to express the affectionate and kind purposes of her little mind were beyond measure delightful to me...the children were already asleep[on her return to Exeter] ...the youngest I was told had a slight cold and hoarseness... Flinging her little arms around me, she clung to my bosom and began her usual lively and engaging prattle; but it had lost its usual power of entertaining me as I perceived the hoarseness rapidly increasing, and soon found it accompanied with the peculiar sound which always attends the disorder I so much dreaded, the croup. We sent immediately for the first medical assistance, but all human help was vain – (this fatal disease was at that time new to this part of the country, and its nature and remedy equally unknown to our ablest practitioners) – and in less than forty-eight hours my little angel was translated to a state more suited to her innocence and purity. (Unnamed girl aged six) Conceive then, if you can, the anguish we felt, when in the following month of October, a cold and sore throat, (which at first appeared to be very slight) were succeeded by the Croup and in a few hours this beloved child, more dear to our hearts than any other earthly blessing, much more dear than I can find words to express, was taken from us, and we were left in a state nearly bordering on despair. [...]Her affectionate disposition was constantly displayed in the kindest attentions to her little brother, and in the tenderness with which she endeavoured to soothe and soften every kind of affliction which she witnessed...And in her last illness, when the Physician had pronounced her irrecoverable and I knew that a very few hours must terminate her Existence...she endeavoured to comfort me. “Do not vex yourself on my account, dearest Mama! I am not half so ill as when I had the sore throat at Bideford. Indeed I shall soon be well again” (Unnamed girl aged two) I immediately adopted this method of prevention (advised by Dr Cullen of Edinburgh in 1781) as I also did those for the cure of the disease as soon as it again made its appearance on this little girl; but all was unavailing, and with inexpressible anguish I saw her sinking under its violence when we were informed that Norris’s fever-drops had been tried with success in this complaint. A bottle was immediately procured, and I thought it appeared for a while to check the progress of the disorder; but the remedy was applied too late – a few hours terminated her sufferings and left me again an afflicted Mother, full of anxiety for the fate of my surviving child, and trembling with apprehension at the appearance of every common cold. All excerpts taken from ‘Family Memorials’ (1884) compiled by the younger Anna Wilhelmina Merivale. I am also indebted to Beryl Coe for her research (see below) which corroborated the accounts in Family Memorials. On 18/06/2013, Beryl Coe wrote: Dear Rachel Anyway, back to your ancestors. I have looked at the accounts again and found the following records, all dates are for payment of the account to the graveyard. 26 December 1771 Received from Mr Merivale for making his cave, 15 shillings. I think this was a sort of chambered tomb, it was the most expensive thing to have. People often seemed to have one built in advance, ready for when it was needed by their family. I suppose men thought if they went first it made life easier for their widow, except you than had to pay again for it to be opened! 29 May 1778 Opening Mr Merivale's cave 5 shillings, does not say who for. 21 Sep 1778 ditto 20 Oct 1780 ditto 27 Feb 1805 Rev Manning paid for the opening of his own cave for the burial of Mrs Merivale. Elizabeth? Maybe her family were short of money by then? Rev Manning often arranged free burials for the poor, they had a poor fund that paid the money, or occasionally the graveyard did not get paid at all. Sorry didn't get as far as looking at Ann, buried in 1815, who is on the obelisk. Best wishes, Beryl ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Beryl, As a point of interest I've got to the bottom of this 27 Feb 1805 Rev Manning paid for the opening of his own cave for the burial of Mrs Merivale. Elizabeth? Elizabeth Merivale, formerly Mrs Manning, was James Manning's mother, hence her burial in his tomb! James Manning moved with his widowed mother to Devon from Northamptonshire when she married Samuel Merivale, her childhood sweetheart. James Manning took over his stepfather's preaching duties in Thorverton, and became Minister to the Unitarian Chapel in Exeter (George's Meeting), a post which he held for 53 years! Rachel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 24/06/2013, Beryl Coe wrote: Dear Rachel That is really interesting, and explains it all - not a shortage of money because James would have made sure she was looked after, I expect she lived with him and family when widowed? I hope to do a write up about the graveyard eventually, so all these stories are worth knowing. The use of caves by other families seemed to happen quite a bit, I suppose you could inherit one, and they were also sold, presumably if a family died out or moved away. The Merivales popped up again in connection with another one I looked into, the Katenkamp's. Herman Katenkamp married Ann Moore in 1747 at Holy Trinity, and their daughter Ann married John Merivale there in 1773, as I'm sure you know. Herman Katenkamp paid for a grave for a child in Jan 1753, "to the right hand side next to the vault", I wonder why not in the vault? Moore children were put in to "the Katenkamp's cave" in 1755, 1756 and 1757, and others later. Ann Katenkamp, nee Moore, was buried there in 1767. Later the Moores were referred to as having a cave, maybe they inherited the Katenkamp one as there is no mention of one being built for them. Beryl ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 Subject: Re: Graveyard Dear Beryl Elizabeth Merivale outlived her husband by over 30 years having only been married to him for about 5. I'll have a look through the texts to see if she's mentioned, but, as you say, she must have been supported by her son. Samuel must have made some provision for her but he was anxious that his son should inherit the bulk of the Shellaber fortune and that it shouldn't be jeopardised by his re-marriage, and Elizabeth agreed to this. I had no idea the Katencamps were there too, how interesting. I attach a portrait of the family, Herman K and Ann Moor and their children. The little girl with the flower, looking straight at you, is Ann who married John Merivale. It will be their infants who were buried in the Merivale vault in 1778-80. She wrote a fascinating memoir of her father, family life and early marriage including the death from croup of her children, which is absolutely pathetic. The Moors are a bit of an enigma. Herman K was a German merchant banker who worked, I think, for the Barings. Ann Moor was solid Exeter stock. A couple of the Katencamp boys were notoriously badly behaved, one died of alcoholism. Rachel |
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