James Sterling (poet)

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James Sterling
Born1701
Died1763 (aged 6162)
Alma mater Trinity College, Dublin (BA)
Notable work The Rival Generals
The Parricide

James Sterling (1701 – 1763) was an Irish cleric and poet.

Contents

Life

The son of James Sterling, he entered Trinity College, Dublin as a scholar in 1718, graduating B.A. in 1720 and M.A. in 1733. In that year he went to London with his friend Matthew Concanen. [1]

In November 1737 Sterling took a living in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He was from 1739 the minister of the Episcopal St. Paul's Church near Chestertown. [2] [3] His ministry lasted to 1763, and saw the brick church doubled in size. [4]

Sterling travelled to London in 1752. He had associated in a scheme, with Benjamin Franklin who brought in backers from Philadelphia, to develop the North-West Passage. Franklin had become a sponsor of Captain Charles Swaine, who eventually made a Labrador Sea expedition in the Argo, in 1753. Sterling, however, struck out on his own, with a group of London merchants, and went to the Board of Trade for them, seeking exclusive rights to trade on the Labrador coast. Plans came to nothing, when the Board favoured the Hudson's Bay Company instead. [1] [5]

Works

Sterling published: [1]

In 1724, Sterling made three contributions to Concanen's Poems, signed "J. S." [1]

Family

Sterling married, firstly, Nancy Lyddell, who had acted in The Rival Generals in Dublin. In 1723, they went on to London, and Nancy made her stage debut there. She had died by 1733. In Maryland, he married in 1743 Rebecca Holt, widow of the Rev. Arthur Holt, and they had a daughter Rebecca, who married William Carmichael. He married as his third wife Mary Smith, in 1749. [2]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Sterling, James"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 54. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Lemay, J. A. Leo. "Sterling, James". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26407.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. "St. Paul's Church Chestertown" . Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  4. Perry, William Stevens (1885). "The History of the American Episcopal Church, 1587–1883". Internet Archive . Boston: J. R. Osgood. p. 611. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  5. Williams, Glyn (2003). Voyages of Delusion: The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason. HarperCollins. p. 212. ISBN   9780006532132.
  6. Greene, John C.; Clark, Gladys L. H. (1993). The Dublin Stage, 1720-1745: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments, and Afterpieces. Lehigh University Press. p. 107. ISBN   9780934223225 . Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  7. Shields, David S. (15 June 2010). Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. University of Chicago Press. p. 17. ISBN   9780226752990 . Retrieved 1 May 2018.
Attribution

Wikisource-logo.svg This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1898). "Sterling, James". Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 54. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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